Boston
by rbnnybt
Summary: Starring Reid and Morgan in Boston, and featuring the Red Sox, the T, and nukular weapons.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Author's Note: Here is the second in my series of stories, starring Reid and each character in turn. The full list is on my profile page. Please R & R!

* * *

Chapter 1

Game 1, American League Championship Series  
New York Yankees at Boston Red Sox  
C. Sabathia vs. J. Lester  
October 15, 2010

Derek Morgan was in the best of moods. He couldn't believe his luck. Here he was, on a warm October night at Fenway Park, chomping down upon a Fenway Frank while watching his favorite team continue their championship run in his favorite sport.

"Hey Morgan?" Reid slurred through a mouthful of his own Fenway Frank. "Why are you a Red Sox fan? You grew up in Chicago, didn't you? Shouldn't you be rooting for the Chicago team?"

Morgan buried his face in his hands at Reid's ignorance. The Birthday Boy blinked expectantly, oblivious to the smear of ketchup on his cheek as he waited to hear the tale of Morgan's unusual baseball affiliations.

"There are two teams in Chicago, Reid," Morgan explained. "The Chicago Cubs and the Chicago White Sox. I happen to be a fan of neither."

"Oh," Reid considered, "You couldn't decide which Chicago team to root for, so you settled on the Red Sox instead?"

"No, not exactly," Morgan told his story. "My mom happens to be a rabid Red Sox fan. She went to college at Wellesley, and that's where she picked up the disease. The disease is terminal."

"Oh, I get it!" Reid answered. "Your mom brain-washed you into rooting for the Red Sox, probably from the time that you were an infant. Mothers can be very persuasive."

"You're telling me!" Morgan replied. "Before I was born, while I was still a fetus in my mother's womb, she used to play me taped radio broadcasts of Red Sox games from the 1967 World Series. Her favorite player was Carl Yazstremski."

"Yes, yes!" Reid answered excitedly. "I just finished reading about the 1967 World Series," he held up a 1000-page book entitled "The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract". At the sight of the book, Morgan realized that it had been a horrible mistake to bring Reid to a baseball game. Everyone, including Morgan, knew that baseball = statistics.

"According to my research prior to the game," Reid began expounding while Morgan stuffed the remainder of his Fenway Frank into his mouth so that his hands could be free to cover both of his ears. "Sabermetrics designates Wins Above Replacement, or WAR, as the most all-inclusive measure of a player's value to his team. Tonight's starting pitchers, C.C. Sabathia and Jon Lester, are both among the Top 10 pitchers in WAR in the American League. Their WAR values range from 4.5 to 5.5, which are substantially higher than a WAR value of 2 for a league-average player."

"For pitchers, WAR is calculated from FIP, or Fielding Independent Pitching, which measures a pitcher's responsibility for his runs allowed based on his numbers of walks, strikeouts, and home runs," Reid continued expounding while Morgan ripped his paper napkin in half, wadded up the halves, and plugged the halves into both of his ears.

"For position players, WAR is calculated from wRAA, Weighted Runs Above Average, and UZR, Ultimate Zone Rating, which measure a player's offensive and defensive contributions, respectively," Reid expounded further while Morgan removed his jacket, wrapped it around his head, and tied the arms under his chin until the thick fabric covered both of his ears.

"Mumble, mumble...Blather, blather..." was all that Morgan could hear beneath his impenetrable shield of auditory protection.

"Hey Morgan?" Reid tugged at Morgan's shield. "I'm going to use the restroom. Save my seat for me, OK?" he mouthed slowly so that Morgan could have time to lip-read his words.

"Yeah, OK, you got it," Morgan replied, his own voice sounding distant through his shield. He shook his head in his baseball cap as Reid walked down the stairs towards the concourse. Reid didn't understand that seats at a baseball game were reserved, but he could spout endless statistics about WAR, FIP, wRAA, and UZR. Reid didn't know that Chicago had two baseball teams, but he could recite the complete 2010 statistics of each player on the 25-man roster of each team in the playoffs.

"Did I miss anything?" Reid asked, handing Morgan a giant stick of pink cotton candy that he had acquired after his rendezvous with the restroom. "Has the game started yet?"

"Reid!" Morgan shed his protective shield in disbelief. "Where have you been? It's the 3rd inning! The game has been going on for an hour!"

"Oh," Reid realized, "I thought the players were still warming up. The batters keep hitting everything into the stands on either side of the field."

"Those are foul balls, Reid," Morgan explained very very slowly. "This is the nature of a Red Sox-Yankees game, that the batters work the count to 3-2, then hit 6-12 foul balls before finally striking out. They're trying to make the pitchers work as hard as they can."

"Is that why the guy standing behind the catcher has been rolling his eyes and muttering to himself all this time?" Reid asked, focusing his tiny old-fashioned spyglass upon the figure behind the plate.

"What? What guy?" Morgan asked back.

"The guy wearing the mask," Reid replied. "I wonder if they'd let me onto the field if I wore a mask..."

"Reid!" Morgan stared at Reid in further disbelief. "That's the home plate umpire! He's supposed to be on the field, standing behind the catcher, calling balls and strikes!"

"Oooooooh," Reid realized again, "No wonder he keeps putting up fingers and pumping his arms back and forth. I thought that he was mad about how long the game was taking."

"Well, he probably is mad about the game," Morgan explained. "Tonight's umpire is Joe West. He has a reputation for complaining when the game takes too long, which happens every time the Red Sox and Yankees play each other. He'd rather have it all over in an hour. Me personally? I'd rather they play two!"

Morgan stretched out his arms and took a swig of his $9 beer. He leaned forward in his seat and crossed his arms over the wall in front of him, peering down upon the emerald outfield from his coveted position atop the Green Monster. Back in August, he had won the bench-press contest at his gym, and the grand prize had been a pair of tickets to Game 1 of the ALCS. At the time, he had not expected that the game would include his favorite team. The Red Sox had been 7 games back in the Wild Card and 9 games back in the Division. Then, they had won 13 in a row in September to vault themselves to the top of the division standings. It was an unbelievable comeback, almost as unbelievable as their unprecedented one-of-a-kind comeback in the 2004 ALCS.

Of all the people he could have taken to the game with him, Morgan was glad that he had chosen Reid. Statistics or no statistics, the kid had just turned 29, and the only sporting event that he had ever attended had been a "top secret" Redskins game with JJ five years ago. Everyone, including Morgan, knew that the Redskins sucked, then and now.

Reid slurped up the last of his cotton candy and snuck a peek at his scorecard in his jacket pocket. He had been deliberately torturing Morgan for the past hour, pretending that he didn't understand anything about baseball while spouting all manner of unnecessary statistics from the various publications of Bill James. On his napkin, he began graphing the course of the game, plotting the win probabilities of the archrivals. Right now, the win probability curve hovered near the 50% line, with neither team having scored any runs and neither pitcher showing any signs of yielding. Reid surmised that the game would be a battle of the bullpens, to be decided in the late innings, when one of the relief pitchers would hang a curveball and send the win probability rocketing up to 100% for one team. He didn't have any particular preference himself, but he rooted for the Red Sox, because Morgan rooted for the Red Sox. Sometimes, Reid's mental processes were very simple. A win for the Red Sox would mean a happy Morgan, and Morgan, of all people on Earth, deserved to be happy.

* * *

Thunder boomed after the first lightning flash and before the second lightning flash. The rain spattered against Reid's head in huge drops that then rolled down his neck. Morgan banged his head, protected in a Red Sox baseball cap, against the top of the Green Monster.

"Why? Why? Whyyyyyyy?" he repeated over and over to himself.

"Morgan, what's wrong? Are you OK?" Reid asked. "Are you sick? Was it the hot dog? Was it the cotton candy? Was it the beer? Was it the pumpkin ale I snuck into the ballpark?"

"No, Reid, no," Morgan replied, still banging his head against the wall. "It's the game. Can't you see that we're headed for a rain delay? This is not good news!"

"What do you mean it's not good news?" Reid asked. "It's the top of the 6th, and we're leading, albeit by 1 run. Big Papi hit a two-run homer in the bottom of the 5th, remember? I heard some of the other fans saying that it was a miracle, because Big Papi never hits well against lefties like Sabathia."

"Yeah, I remember, and that's when the game should have ended," Morgan sighed. "If we get into a long rain delay, Lester won't be able to come back out afterwards. He'll have to turn the game over to the bullpen, and our bullpen is..." he shook his head in resignation.

"Oh come on, Morgan," Reid admonished his wavering friend. "The Red Sox won the AL East. The bullpen can't be that bad!"

"No, you don't understand!" Morgan argued, "It can be that bad! That miracle comeback in September was spurred by the starting pitching and the offense, not the bullpen. Even during that 13-game run, the bullpen tried to blow several games in the late innings, but the offense wouldn't let them."

"Well, I still have faith in the Red Sox," Reid declared.

"You just found out that there was a team called the Red Sox three days ago, when I gave you the tickets for your birthday!" Morgan declared back.

"What does that have to do with anything?" Reid asked. "So I'm a new fan. I'm a new fan who still has faith in my team," he yanked a brand new Red Sox cap out of his messenger bag and smoothed it over his thick hair. Morgan laughed and shook his head again, smoothing his old faded Red Sox cap over his non-existent hair. The rain came down steadily now, and the two fans, the old and the new, decided to visit the concession stands while the groundscrew covered the diamond with the much-hated tarp.

On his way back from the concession stands, Reid spotted three college-aged kids, bare-chested and drunk, leaping down to the grass from the first base wall. He experienced an intense urge to follow. Now that he had become a new denizen of Red Sox Nation, he didn't want to pass up on a chance to run around the bases, pretending that he had hit a home run, or to run around the outfield, pretending that he was making spectacular catches. It seemed to be a Red Sox tradition, that their fans were welcomed onto the field during rain delays, even during important playoff games like this one.

"Reid! No! Don't do that!" Morgan yelled as Reid leaped over the wall. He rushed down the stairs, nearly tipping his beers onto a group of old ladies in wheelchairs, before he reached the first base wall.

"Reid! Get back here! That's not allowed!" Morgan yelled after the skinny figure. He cursed under his breath. He should have gotten that leash that he had promised to get after the Great Anthrax Debacle of 2009. He should have gotten that leash while Reid had been immobilized for a year by his bad knee. Now, Reid's knee had healed, and Reid had returned to his habit of running off, willy-nilly, into ill-advised impromptu adventures.

Morgan leaped over the wall and chased the security guards as the security guards chased Reid. He was a lot fitter than any of the security guards and gained on the group quickly, but not before one of the security guards tackled Reid to the ground. The security guard had time to drag Reid to his feet and whip out a pair of handcuffs before Morgan arrived breathlessly on the scene.

"FBI!" Morgan whipped out his badge.

"FBI!" Reid whipped out his own badge.

The agents stood on either side of the group of security guards, gaping at each other and not knowing how to continue their abuse of law enforcement credentials.

"FBI?" asked an elderly police officer who walked over from his usual position by the bullpen door. "SSA Derek Morgan and SSA Dr. Spencer Reid?" he consulted a slip of paper in his hand.

"Yes, I'm Derek Morgan," Morgan replied in a questioning tone. He could not fathom why anyone would know his name at a baseball game.

"A call just came for Agents Morgan and Reid from the FBI offices in Quantico, Virginia," the officer explained. "It was from Unit Chief Aaron Hotchner of the Behavioral Analysis Unit," he recited from the same slip of paper.

"Hotch?" Reid asked in his little girl voice, the one that appeared whenever he was extraordinarily excited or extraordinarily nervous. "Why would Hotch call us here? Has something happened?" he checked his cell phone to discover four voicemails from JJ, three voicemails from Prentiss, and two voicemails from Hotch. Morgan checked his cell phone to discover the same. Apparently, the crowd of rabid Red Sox fans and equally rabid Yankee fans had drowned out the sound of their cell phones ringing.

"I don't know the specifics," said the officer. "All I know is I'm supposed to find the two of you and take you over to City Hall. There's some kind of situation that requires your expertise."

Reid glanced at Morgan with a worried expression. Morgan picked up his phone and called Hotch.

"Hotch? What's going on?" Morgan yelled into the phone over the crowd noise.

"Are you with Officer Dunn at Fenway Park? Is Reid there with you?" Hotch asked.

"Yeah, we just met him," Morgan replied, squinting to check the officer's name on his wet uniform. He neglected to mention exactly how they had met the officer.

"You two need to head over to City Hall right now," said Hotch. "The Governor and Mayor will both be there. We'll brief you via teleconferencing when you get there."

"What's going on, Hotch? I'm getting the feeling that this situation, whatever it is, is bad and urgent?" Morgan asked.

"You're getting the right feeling," Hotch answered. "It's too complicated to explain over the phone..."

Before he could hang up, Hotch heard Reid's voice through the phone. He recognized it as Reid's little girl voice, excited and nervous all at once.

"Hotch? How bad is it? Just give us a number? How many victims?"

"Known victims: zero," Hotch replied. "Potential victims: ten to a hundred thousand," he hung up.

Morgan and Reid did not look at each other before they allowed themselves to be handcuffed and escorted off the field by Officer Dunn of the Boston Police Department. Whatever disaster was about to occur, a calm cheerful facade had to be maintained for the public. The public would notice something out of the ordinary if the two unruly fans were not arrested and escorted off the field in shame. Each of the two fans was lost in his own worst fears, his mind oscillating between the types of situations that could engender ten to a hundred thousand casualties. Now was a good time to be lost. Later, there would be no time for any form of the word "lose".


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Author's Note: Here is the second in my series of stories, starring Reid and each character in turn. The full list is on my profile page. Please R & R!

* * *

Chapter 2

Boston City Hall Situation Room  
October 15, 2010

"An anonymous tip arrived at the JFK Federal Building this afternoon," said Special Agent Edward Laurentis, the Special Agent in Charge at the FBI Field Office in Boston. "Normally, a random anonymous tip would not bring in Counterterrorism," he pointed at a screen, where the WMD/DT, or Weapons of Mass Destruction and Domestic Terrorism, section of the Counterterrorism Division was gathered. "Or the Behavioral Analysis Unit," he pointed at an adjacent screen, where Hotch, Rossi, Prentiss, JJ, and Garcia were gathered. "Nor would we have called in the Mayor," he gestured at the Mayor sitting in a dark corner of the room. "Or the Governor," he gestured at the Governor sitting in an equally dark corner of the room.

"This tip is different," Agent Laurentis continued. "It was delivered via voicemail to the Senator's office in the JFK Federal Building. The message was recorded at 2:14 PM. It was extremely fuzzy due to background noise, but our analysts have processed the recording through their software, co-written by Technical Analyst Penelope Garcia," he pointed out Garcia to the other agents in the room.

At the mention of her name, Garcia snapped her head up from her laptop and waved towards something on the far side of the Round Table Room. Then, she realized where the camera was standing and waved in its general direction instead.

Morgan waved back and rubbed his hand over his head in his customary gesture. Reid wiggled his fingers towards the camera and rubbed his hand over his Red Sox cap in his non-customary gesture.

"The recording mentioned two pieces of information that brought the report to our immediate attention," said Agent Laurentis. "First, the voicemail mentioned a long string of digits, which we have traced to a bank account in Puerto Rico. The account belongs to the CP1919 cult, a mysterious cult operating primarily up and down the east coast of the United States. The cult leader is Charles Preston, a former businessman, a wealthy real estate developer, who formed the cult in 2003."

"CP1919? What kind of cult is it? What kind of wackos are we dealing with here?" Morgan asked the agent.

"That's the root of our problem," Agent Laurentis replied, "And that's where the BAU comes in. The cult is extremely secretive about its beliefs and activities. We don't know what its beliefs are. We don't know if its beliefs are related to an existing religion. Normally, cults would go out of their way to attract members, especially members of the wealthy variety, but CP1919 has never advertised itself. Membership appears to be by invitation only."

"Charles Preston is the only solid information we have about the cult," said an agent from the Counterterrorism screen. "We've been monitoring him for a number of years, but our efforts have been half-hearted at best. In today's political environment, a cult leader operating a secretive cult does not command the attention of federal authorities. Agent Claire McDunkin," the agent introduced herself, "Please call me Mac."

"Why would the leader of a secretive cult attract the attention of Counterterrorism?" Morgan asked. Reid nodded along at his question.

"Charles Preston has previously been traced to contacts in the black market for fissile material," Mac replied. "He has sought to acquire uranium-235 and plutonium-239 since 2008. A large sum of money, more than 2 million dollars, disappeared from the CP1919 bank account two weeks ago. Without the voicemail, we would not have known about the withdrawal so quickly. The Counterterrorism Division has a huge amount of information to process. Most of the incoming information gets filed into reports in databases, but remains clogged up there forever, regardless of what the politicians might tell you," she glanced at an older gray-haired agent. Reid guessed that the older agent was her superior.

"Was there a destination bank account for the withdrawal?" Reid asked.

"No," the older agent answered. "The money was simply withdrawn, without being deposited anywhere else. Agent David Cohen," he introduced himself.

"Do you believe that the voicemail came from one of the cult members?" asked Reid.

"A cult member is one likely source," Mac replied. "Another is the recipient of the money withdrawal."

"The person selling the fissile material?" asked Reid.

"Yes," Mac replied.

She paused, allowing everyone to digest the current chain of logic. Reid scribbled something into his little black notebook. Morgan tapped his foot against a leg of the conference table.

Something was up, something beyond a purchase of fissile material, and Morgan couldn't quite put his finger on it. It was perfectly normal for Hotch and JJ to interrupt a leisure activity for a case, but it was not perfectly normal for roomfuls and screenfuls of senior FBI personnel to brief two members of the BAU. Morgan and Reid were being singled out according to someone else's plan, and Morgan wasn't sure if he liked that at all.

"The bank account number is the first piece of information," Morgan pointed out. "You said that there were two pieces of information from the voicemail. What's the second?"

"The second is a date," said Agent Cohen, "October 16, 2010."

"That's exactly 27 minutes from now," Morgan checked his watch.

"Yes," said Agent Laurentis. "The message continued after the date, but it was extremely garbled. Our analysts couldn't make anything out of it, until Technical Analyst Garcia was able to re-write a portion of the software on the fly," he turned towards the BAU screen, where Garcia was now paying full attention.

"I re-wrote and re-compiled a module of the speech recognition engine," Garcia explained. "I ran the recording through it and isolated an additional message after the date."

Morgan and Reid leaned forward simultaneously, as if waiting for Garcia to let them in on a particularly juicy piece of gossip. Everyone else stayed put, having already heard the information.

"October 16, 2010...12:45 AM...Government Center," said Garcia.

"12:45 AM?" Reid and Morgan checked their watches simultaneously.

"12:45 AM at the Government Center T Station," said Agent Laurentis. "The last Green Line trains leave at 12:45 AM. The T station is right across from City Hall in the Government Center Complex," he pointed towards the north for the benefit of Morgan and Reid.

"That's where you come in, Reid," Hotch spoke for the first time.

"Me?" Reid asked.

"Reid?" Morgan asked.

"Yes, Reid," said Hotch. "We have to send someone to meet the caller at the T station. Morgan and Reid are our only two choices. You two are the only people in Boston qualified to perform this task."

"Why is that?" Reid asked. "I mean, of course I'll go," he added quickly. He didn't want any of the other agents to think that he was backing away from a mission.

"We have to send a profiler," Hotch explained. "Currently, we have almost no information about the cult. We only have information about Charles Preston himself, and he's a recluse who hardly ever leaves his vacation home in Gloucester. Whoever meets the anonymous caller is our only conduit of new information. We have to send the person best able to record and synthesize the information."

"And that person is Reid the Human Computer," said Rossi. "No offense, Reid."

"None taken, Dave," Reid replied.

"No, no way!" Morgan declared. "I'm not letting you do this! I'm a profiler too. I can go!"

"No, Morgan," Hotch rejected his offer. "Remember the previous incident, the one near DC? When Reid walked into that house by himself?"

"Yeah, that didn't turn out so well, did it?" Morgan retorted.

Hotch was referring obliquely to the Great Anthrax Debacle of 2009, which still had to be concealed from the public. Different divisions of the FBI concealed information from each other, but even if they didn't, the Governor and the Mayor were local authorities who had no need to know.

"Actually, that turned out exceedingly well," Hotch replied. "What was supposed to happen didn't happen, because Reid was able to record and synthesize the information for our benefit. After the incident, I realized something. I realized that if a similar situation ever came up again and if I could choose any one of us to send into it, I would send Reid."

"Don't worry about it, Morgan," Reid said, "I'll go. I'll try not to screw up this time."

"I'm not saying that you screwed up last time," Morgan replied. "I'm just saying that we don't know who or what is meeting us at the T station. It's better for me to go."

"Maybe no one is meeting you at the T station," said Prentiss.

"Yeah, it could all turn out to be a crank caller," said JJ.

"But we can't take any risks," said Hotch, "Not when fissile material is involved."

"When fissile material may or may not be involved!" Morgan corrected Hotch.

"But let me get this straight here," he continued a little too loudly. "I'm a risk? I'm considered a risk now?"

"No, that's not what Hotch meant," Reid said softly, "I'll go, Morgan."

"Reid, you know that it's better for me to go," Morgan argued.

"Hotch told me to go, and I'll go," Reid said less softly. "Hotch is the Unit Chief."

"Reid..." Morgan didn't have time to reveal his new argument before Hotch put to a stop to the proceedings.

"The matter is settled," Hotch said firmly. "Reid will go. He will memorize every piece of information about the person and the scene. He will make a psychological assessment of the person who meets him. He will offer the person federal protection in exchange for information about the cult. After he gets back," he said pointedly, "He will give us the information we need to prevent a major terrorist attack on the city of Boston."

The other agents nodded and swung their legs back and forth as they swiveled around in their chairs. Not all of them believed in profiling as a viable law enforcement technique, but right now, faced with the meager collection of facts upon the table, profiling was the only law enforcement technique available.

Morgan watched the Earth tilt upon the back of its turtle. It tilted sideways dangerously, threatening to slide off the edge like a flat sheet of cardboard. In Morgan's eyes, 12:00 AM on October 16, 2010 was the beginning of a new world order.

In the new world order, Hotch willingly sent Reid into deep dark unknowns while everyone else willingly stood by and allowed it to happen. Morgan was angry at Hotch and ashamed at himself.

Morgan was ashamed that he was Morgan. Morgan was ashamed that he was not Reid. One was the brain, and one was the brawn, and Morgan was ashamed to discover that brain and brawn were not equals.

Deciding that neither anger or shame was constructive for the situation at hand, Morgan let go of his anger and fooled himself into thinking that he had let of his shame as well. In fooling himself, he failed to remember that the Earth was tilting upon the back of its turtle. Soon, it would slide off into space and land upside down. Now and later, Morgan would have to hold onto something for dear life.

"Hey Reid?" Morgan asked.

"Yeah Morgan?" Reid asked.

"See you when you get back," Morgan replied.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Author's Note: Here is the second in my series of stories, starring Reid and each character in turn. The full list is on my profile page. Please R & R!

* * *

Chapter 3

Government Center T Station  
October 16, 2010

Reid sat on a dirty bench, waiting for the last Green Line train to pull out of the Government Center T Station.

"Waaaaaaaiiiiiiit! Don't leeeeeeeaaaaaaave!" a group of college students hurtled down the stairs from the plaza.

The lead student hopped onto the train and blocked the doorway while the conductor glared at her. The other students rushed over and boarded the train breathlessly. The conductor scowled, looked this way and that, and snapped the door shut with the click of a button. With another click, the train geared up and pulled away on its tracks.

Through the window of the train, Reid watched the group of relieved college students laughing and talking amongst themselves. The train was the "B" line, so Reid guessed that the students were undergrads at Boston College.

The station manager, who had been relieved of duty twenty minutes earlier by an FBI agent posing as an MBTA authority, was off in a sports bar, commiserating with his fellow Red Sox fans about his team's loss in Game 1 of the ALCS. As Reid had predicted and as Morgan had feared, one of the relief pitchers had hung a curveball and sent the win probability rocketing up to 100% for the New York Yankees. The deplorable pitch had resulted in a grand slam in the top of the 8th. In the two innings that remained, the Red Sox offense had been unable to recover from the trauma. Either they had been physically unable, or they had been mentally demoralized. No one knew the cause, but the event opened up an opportunity for the fans of both teams to flame each other on Internet message boards. The fans of other baseball teams rolled their collective eyes and decided to watch the NLCS instead. Everyone, except Red Sox fans and Yankee fans, could stand to live out the rest of their lives without seeing either team in the playoffs ever again.

Reid sighed and traced out the "B" on his baseball cap. He had a feeling that rooting for the Red Sox was going to be a character-building experience.

The fake MBTA authority signaled to Reid that the T station was empty. He exited the ticket booth, looked around without seeing anyone else, and climbed reluctantly up the stairs towards the plaza. At the top, he pulled down a metal door and chained the station shut for the night, but not before he peeked in under the half-closed opening and gave Reid a thumbs-up more confident than he felt. Reid returned Morgan's thumbs-up before waving at him to leave the station.

Five minutes passed in silence and solitude. Reid twiddled his thumbs until his knuckles were sore.

Another five minutes passed. Reid memorized a map of the Boston subway system.

Two additional intervals of five minutes passed. Reid memorized a map of the Route 1 bus line between Boston and Harvard Square.

He paced up and down the concourse, then up and down the tracks, where the Green Line did not have a third rail. The third rail, or conductor rail, was a high conductivity rail that ran parallel to the tracks on one side of the train. It supplied electricity to the trains, which bore contacts, or shoes, on their sides to interface with the third rail. At the Park Street T Station, a mere 1,000 feet distant, signs over the sunken tracks displayed dire warnings about the third rail. "Third Rail!" the warnings screamed, "High Voltage!" they flashed pictorial bolts of lightning. The signs did their jobs well, deterring any passengers who felt the urge to jump over the sunken tracks onto the opposite side of the platform.

At exactly 1:15 AM, Reid stopped calculating the initial velocity that he needed to vault himself over the Red Line tracks. At exactly 1:15 AM, the ticket booth at the Government Center T Station exploded.

Before flames engulfed the booth, Reid took note of a laminated poster over the door. He wondered why he had not noticed it before. He supposed that he had been too busy pretending to be SSA Derek Morgan to pay any attention to the ticket booth. He admonished himself, reminding himself that he was SSA Dr. Spencer Reid, whose mission was to record and synthesize information for the rest of the BAU.

He recorded and synthesized the information upon the poster. The shiny laminated surface depicted a cluster of three large dots, one blue and two red, with a small black dot orbiting the group.

Reid recognized it as an atom of tritium.

Tritium was not a fissile material. Rather, it was a fusile material. It was used in government research laboratories for experiments on nuclear fusion. It was used on remote Pacific islands for tests of thermonuclear weapons, popularly known as hydrogen bombs.

* * *

Boston City Hall Situation Room  
October 16, 2010

"Why hasn't Reid called us yet?" Morgan spoke to Hotch through the teleconferencing screen.

"He's been there for an hour," Prentiss said to her watch.

"Everyone just stay calm and let the Human Computer do his work," Rossi remarked to no one.

JJ and Garcia leaned against each other on the floor in the back of the Round Table Room. They were expressionless and mute as they played the worst possible scenarios in their minds. Fortunately, none of the scenarios came close to being as bad as the real thing.

"Reid?" Morgan answered his cell phone on the first ring.

"Morgan? I can't hear you...Can you hear me?" Reid coughed through the phone. "I'm not getting much reception here..."

"Reid! Reid! Talk to me! What's going on?" Morgan asked urgently.

"Morgan? Are you there? I can't hear you...My ears are ringing," came the reply accompanied by a severe fit of coughing. "If you're there, you have to know this! The cult is planning to set off a hydrogen bomb, not an atomic bomb," the voice suppressed another fit of coughing. "They...tritium..." static buzzed into Morgan's ears, "I'll be...Park Street..." Morgan's phone dropped the call.

"Shit!" Morgan yelled into the Situation Room. "Shit!" he yelled into the Round Table Room.

"I'm going to the Government Center T Station," Morgan declared to the BAU. "I'll see you when I get back," he stormed out of the room.

* * *

Government Center Complex  
October 16, 2010

The explosion at the ticket booth unlodged a metal strut in the wall of the Government Center T Station. The old corroded strut collapsed under a mere 5 psi of pressure from the explosion, sending a huge pile of bricks and concrete blocks over the entrance. The station was inaccessible.

"Reid!" Morgan answered his cell phone on the first ring.

"This is Agent Laurentis," a deep voice replied. "The Park Street T Station has been bombed. I'm over here myself, and I've sent for the Bomb Squad. So far, it looks like chemical, not nuclear, explosives, but the bomb caused enough damage to block off the entrance."

"Hold on a second, Agent," said Morgan.

"Reid!" he flipped over to a second call arriving on his cell phone.

"Hotch," a deep voice replied. "I just got word that all four of the centrally located T stations in Boston have been bombed. The explosions occurred at approximately the same time, a quarter after one. Government Center, Park Street, Downtown Crossing, and State Street are the four stations affected. The Boston subway is a hub-and-spoke system. Right now, the hub is broken..."

"Hold on a second, Hotch," said Morgan.

"Is there any other way to get into the Government Center T Station?" Morgan flipped back to Agent Laurentis.

"Yes, through one of the Green Line stations nearby," Agent Laurentis explained. "But we can't send anyone in there right now, not until we know more about the nature of the explosion."

"We need to send a team in!" Morgan insisted. "As you may recall," he said sarcastically, "We sent one of our agents into a trap this morning. He's stuck inside the T station, and we don't have any details on his condition."

"Have you heard from him?" asked Agent Laurentis.

"Yes," Morgan replied, "He's alive. All we know is that he's still alive. That's why we need to send a team through one of the other stations. Unless you have any objections, I'll be the one leading the team."

"No can do, Agent Morgan," the other agent replied. "At this point, we're not sending anyone else into a deathtrap. If you try to enter any T station yourself, you will be detained."

"F..." a tirade of expletives threatened to escape Morgan's lips, so he flipped back to Hotch. "Hotch? You've got to convince these Boston asshats to send a team through one of the Green Line stations. You've got to convince them to let me in, at least. We've got to find Reid!"

"No," Hotch replied firmly. "I'm not sending you into the same trap, Morgan. You're the bomb expert for the BAU. We're going to need your expertise immediately. You're going to walk back to City Hall and lead this case. We're going to fly in to assist you, but you have to promise us that you won't be running off by yourself, trying to enter the subway system to find Reid."

"Are you kidding me, Hotch?" Morgan yelled at his boss through the phone. "You expect me to sit on my ass and play with fake bombs while Reid is lying dead or injured in a pile of rubble in the subway?"

"Yes, Morgan," Hotch replied calmly. "You have to calm down. Right now! That's an order!"

"Morgan? It's Prentiss," came the sound of a soothing voice over the speakerphone. "Look, Morgan, we're all as worried about Reid as you are, but we have to stay calm. You're the last person who spoke to Reid. You have to tell us what he said."

"I have to...I have to tell you..." Morgan repeated. "What Reid said on the phone...Goddamnit! I can't remember! I can't remember any of it! Not a single Goddamn word of it!"

"It's OK, Sweet Cheeks," came the sound of Garcia's voice. "One step at a time and all together, let's try to remember what our baby said."

"I was talking to you guys, and the phone rang, and I answered it right away. Reid said my name, but it seemed like he was having trouble hearing anything I said. He said that his ears were ringing."

"Oh, poor baby, I'll have to remember to kiss that booboo when he gets back," Garcia said. "And after that? What did he say after he said that his ears were ringing?" she prompted Morgan.

"Damn it! I told you that I can't remember!" Morgan replied in frustration.

"OK, forget about the ears ringing," Garcia switched tactics. "Reid told you something over the phone, and you looked totally shocked for a second, and you screamed 'Shit!', and you told us that you were going to the T station, and you ran out of the room."

"I was screaming 'Shit!', because the phone went dead," Morgan explained. "Before the phone went dead, there was a whole bunch of static, and Reid said..."

"Oh shit," Morgan whispered to himself, "Oh no...oh no, no, no..." he mumbled.

"What? What?" said a chorus of voices from the Round Table Room.

"Reid said that he had discovered that the cult was planning to set off a hydrogen bomb, not an atomic bomb. At least that's what I think he said. He was coughing the whole time, and I couldn't hear very clearly, but I'm pretty sure that's what he said. The cult has tritium, used as the fusile material in thermonuclear weapons, which, unlike fission weapons made from uranium-235 and plutonium-239, have no upper limits for the energy produced in the explosions," Morgan recited from his wealth of bomb-making knowledge.

"Shit!" screamed five voices from the Round Table Room.

* * *

Government Center T Station  
October 16, 2010

The Green Line track stretched out ahead of the young man in the Red Sox cap.

"It's a track," he told himself, in the same tone that someone else had once told him, "It's a ditch."

The man was still young, because he had just turned 29, but he didn't know if he would live to see 30. Some people, who thought that 30 was over the hill, didn't want to live to see 30, but the young man was not one of them. He told himself that he would live to see 30, as long as the City of Boston lived to see its 381st birthday on September 17, 2011.

The young man owned three Ph.D.s from Caltech, but he didn't need any of them to tell him that the explosion at the ticket booth had not been a nuclear event. It had been much too small. It had been caused by chemical substances mixed in just the right, or wrong, way to release a relatively puny amount of energy. Conventional explosives did not produce ionizing radiation, so the young man did not expect to die of radiation sickness in the near future. He did not think that he would ever die of radiation sickness. In his line of work, he was far more likely to die of vaporization caused by wandering around in the potential blast zone of a thermonuclear weapon.

The young man walked down the subway tunnel, sweeping his tiny Maglite along the tracks in front of him. He was afraid of the dark, but now was not the time to indulge his fear. The darkness could close in around him and above him and below him, but he would have to ignore it. In the subway tunnel, the darkness breathed down his neck, and he countered by breathing in the warm musty air.

"It's like the steam tunnels at Tech," he reminded himself, hearkening back to his college days when he used to go traipsing through the utility tunnels that snaked under the buildings at Caltech. As long as he equated the subway tunnel with the steam tunnels, the young man held onto a modicum of security.

"At least there's no third rail," he comforted himself. "The Park Street T Station is only about 1,000 feet away, 1,500 feet at most. I'll call Morgan when I get there, and he'll send someone to let me out of the station. He'll come to the station to let me out in person. He'll kill me, but not without resurrecting me afterwards. Then, we'll go back to City Hall and we, all of us, will figure out a way to locate and disarm a hydrogen bomb in the city."

"For every problem, there is a solution," he hearkened back to his college days once again.

With a last look at the brightly-lit T station, the young man adjusted his baseball cap over his eyes and wiped away the sweat on his brow. He proceeded slowly down the subway tunnel, shining his Maglite over the tracks. In each bubble of brightness from the Maglite, he saw the face of a different friend and colleague. He scanned through the bubbles, settling at last upon the smiling teasing visage of his best buddy.

"Morgan is a bomb expert," he said out loud.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Author's Note: Here is the second in my series of stories, starring Reid and each character in turn. The full list is on my profile page. Please R & R!

* * *

Chapter 4

Boston City Hall Situation Room  
October 16, 2010

"Yes, I'm a bomb expert," Morgan answered Dr. Elizabeth Bell, "But only on conventional explosives, not on weapons of mass destruction."

Dr. Bell nodded through the teleconferencing screen. Morgan lowered his eyes to avoid her gaze. Her gaze made him extremely uncomfortable.

Dr. Bell was a member of the WMD/DT team. She was an expert on large-scale thermonuclear weapons. She was in her mid-30s, tall and slender, with delicate facial features and curly brown hair that brushed against her shoulders. Morgan avoided her gaze, because she looked exactly like a female version of Reid.

The feature that most resembled Reid was her eyes. Her hazel eyes carried the same sad distant expression as his hazel eyes. Morgan thought back, trying to remember whether he had ever seen Reid's eyes shed the sad distant expression. There had been times, usually when Reid was deep in thought, that his eyes had taken on an intense focus instead. But as soon as the problem was solved, the focus would disappear, and the eyes would return to their customary expression.

Eventually, after nearly three seconds, Morgan remembered that one time at the office, when he had thrown a baseball across the BAU bullpen. To everyone's surprise, including his own, Reid had caught the ball, raised his arms, and smiled the widest smile that Morgan had ever seen from him. The eyes had carried no hint of sadness during that smile, and Morgan feasted upon the image for a full ten seconds. For a few milliseconds, he wondered if Dr. Bell would look the same when she smiled. Her presence bolstered his belief in God.

In Morgan's mind, God clearly existed, because God was playing with him. God was playing dice, and Morgan was the dice.

"Don't worry, Agent Morgan," Dr. Bell said. "I'm here to assist you and the rest of the BAU in our joint investigation. I'm happy to provide my own expertise, but I understand that the investigation begins and ends with the BAU."

"Counterterrorism wouldn't normally take a backseat approach," she continued. "But, in this case, we've got so little to go on that we have no choice but to defer to the BAU. We don't even have Charles Preston anymore. He disappeared off the grid two weeks ago, around the same time as the money withdrawal. No cell phone activity, no monetary transactions, no sign of anyone at his Gloucester estate."

"Thank you for your cooperation, Dr. Bell," Morgan said. "Have you met the rest of the team?"

"I have," Dr. Bell replied, "All except Dr. Reid, who..."

"We believe that we are dealing with a thermonuclear weapon," Morgan cut her off.

It was bad enough that she looked like Reid's identical twin sister, the type that would emerge if all of Reid's genetic material were held constant while his Y chromosome was swapped for an X chromosome. Morgan didn't want her talking about her twin. Her voice stoked a flicker of panic in his chest. It was only slightly lower than Reid's little girl voice.

"We believe that the CP1919 cult is intent on destroying the City of Boston using a thermonuclear weapon," Morgan repeated.

"How did you arrive at this conclusion?" Dr. Bell asked skeptically.

"Reid...Dr. Reid...told me so on the phone, before we lost contact with him in the T station," Morgan replied.

Again, he looked away from Dr. Bell. He wished that she were in the room with him, so he wouldn't have to look at her when he spoke to her. Faces in a room could be avoided, but faces on a teleconferencing screen could not.

Besides, Morgan didn't want to see Dr. Bell's facial expression. His words sounded preposterous, most of all to himself.

First, he never called Reid "Doctor". Second, he never took the "I know, because he told me so" approach to presenting information. Third, he never sat on his ass while his best buddy waited for his help in a bombed subway station. Finally, he never posed as anyone but himself, especially not as his best buddy.

"A thermonuclear weapon, popularly known as a hydrogen bomb, is different from a fission weapon, popularly known as an atomic bomb," Morgan explained to the rest of the BAU. "A fission weapon depends on the chain reaction radioactive decay of heavy atomic nuclei, such as uranium or plutonium. The decay is known as nuclear fission, and the process releases a huge amount of energy."

Morgan paused for breath. He judged himself to be a poor imposter. Reid would never have paused for breath.

"A thermonuclear weapon depends on the nuclear fusion of light atomic nuclei. In hydrogen bombs, the light atomic nuclei are those of deuterium and tritium, which are both isotopes of hydrogen."

"Hydrogen is the lightest atomic nucleus, containing one proton and no neutrons," said Dr. Bell. "Deuterium, also known as heavy hydrogen, is a naturally occurring stable isotope with one proton and one neutron. Tritium is a synthetic radioactive isotope with one proton and two neutrons."

"In nuclear fusion, deuterium and tritium nuclei combine in a one-to-one ratio to produce a helium nucleus and a neutron," Morgan continued. "The two protons and three neutrons of deuterium and tritium turn into the two protons and two neutrons of helium-4 and a lone neutron that whizzes away. Most of the energy of the D-T reaction is carried off with the high-energy neutron, so the reaction cannot be sustained unless the neutrons are trapped in an impenetrable chamber lined with lead. The chamber also contains fissile material, such as uranium-235 or plutonium-239, both used in fission weapons. The neutrons from the fusion reactions bombard the uranium or plutonium nuclei to trigger fission reactions. The fission reactions produce additional energy to sustain the fusion reactions, which release additional neutrons to sustain the fission reactions."

"Boom, boom, boom..." Morgan motioned with his hands in his customary gesture.

He stopped pacing the Situation Room to find the BAU staring at him like he was an alien. Rossi, Prentiss, and Garcia had been rendered speechless by his Reid-like fact-spouting performance. Hotch was non-committal as he stood in the background. JJ was the only one who was hiding a tiny smile at the corner of her lips.

"We are dealing with a secretive cult that may have planted a hydrogen bomb within the City of Boston," Morgan switched out of Reid Mode.

"And you know this, because your missing colleague told you so?" Dr. Bell frowned.

Morgan found her emphasis on "told you so" extremely off-putting.

"He told you so," she emphasized again, "Before you lost contact with him in the T station. Did he provide any scientific evidence to support his theory?"

"No, as a matter of act, he did not!" Morgan snapped at the scientist. "At the time, he happened to be in the middle of an explosion. If I had to make an uneducated guess, I would say that he was probably too busy fleeing the explosion to bother with the 'scientific evidence'," Morgan emphasized Dr. Bell's words.

"I'm sorry," he apologized immediately. "That was very rude of me," he rubbed his head.

"Our colleague is missing, Dr. Bell," Hotch explained. "We are all extremely anxious about him. Please don't take anything personally."

"My apologies, Agent Morgan," said Dr. Bell, "I should've been more sensitive."

"To answer your question, Dr. Bell," Morgan said softly. "No, Dr. Reid did not provide any scientific evidence for his theory. Still, I believe him."

"Still, we believe him," Hotch joined in. "Dr. Reid has a brilliant mind, one of the best minds in the world. It is our fortune to have him in the BAU," his voice cracked a sliver. "I was the one who sent him to the T station to meet the anonymous caller. I sent him, because I believed that he was the person best able to record and synthesize information on the fly. I believe that's exactly what he did. He didn't have time to back up his statements, but still, we believe him."

"For the time being, let's assume that Dr. Reid's theory is accurate," Dr. Bell conceded an inch. "Given that there is a thermonuclear weapon in the City of Boston, how would the BAU proceed with the current investigation?"

"How would the BAU handle the current crisis?" she corrected herself.

"The BAU is no different from any other investigative team," Hotch replied. "We begin with physical evidence in the physical world. At the same time, we pursue a parallel investigation of the criminal mind - the UnSub's behaviors, expressions, and decisions, the UnSub's mental, emotional, and personality characteristics that compose his psychological state. We combine physical evidence and psychological profiling to arrive at a detailed list of characteristics that help us eliminate or target potential suspects."

Morgan watched Dr. Bell fidget in her chair as Hotch explained the techniques of the Behavorial Analysis Unit. Dr. Bell raised her eyebrows, confirming Morgan's suspicion that she considered profiling a useless form of pseudo-science.

"In this case, the subject is known," Morgan cut in. "The CP1919 cult is our top suspect in the bombings. To thwart the known subject, we will have to apply all our knowledge about cults, cult members, and cult leaders to the CP1919 cult. We'll have to predict its decisions, both the ones already made and the ones yet to be made. Normally, we would focus in on the psychology of a single UnSub, but today, our job is more difficult, because we are dealing with a group of people with unknown beliefs and motives. We may consider the beliefs and motives of the cult, rather than any individual member, to be the actual UnSub. If we can determine what they believe in, we might be able to re-evolve their plot and prevent a nuclear attack."

"That's quite a process, Agent Morgan," Dr. Bell remarked. "I'm only a scientist. Please bear with me while I focus in on the physical evidence."

"Sure," Morgan held his hands out towards the screen, "Go ahead."

"The physical evidence shows that someone blew up four subway stations using timer-controlled conventional explosives in the wee hours of the morning," Dr. Bell summarized. "Your move, Agent Morgan."

"The explosions occurred after the stations had closed for the night," said Morgan. "Mass murder is not the purpose of these initial attacks."

"Not mass murder, but murder..." Prentiss trailed off at a glare from Morgan.

"What Emily means is that a cult member left an anonymous tip to lure an FBI agent into a trap," Hotch explained.

"How do we know that it was a cult member who left the voicemail?" Prentiss asked. "It could have been the person selling the contraband."

"It could have been," Hotch replied, "But it's unlikely. We have to apply to Occam's Razor to the case. Occam's Razor says that the simplest explanation for a set of facts is usually the correct explanation. The cult could have blown up the subway and left the message, or the cult could have blown up the subway while the dealer left the message. The first scenario is most consistent with Occam's Razor."

"Why would a cult that wished to destroy a city warn us via the tip and the explosions?" Dr. Bell asked the profilers.

"Maybe it's not a warning from the cult," Rossi suggested. "Maybe it's a warning from a disgruntled cult member."

"Then why blow up the subway?" asked Prentiss. "Why not just leave the tip?"

"Maybe the warning is unrelated to the explosions," Rossi thought out loud. "Let's imagine that it was the CP1919 cult that blew up the subway. How do you get from blowing up the subway to unleashing a hydrogen bomb?"

"So you think Reid is wrong about the hydrogen bomb?" Morgan asked defensively.

"No, I think Reid is exactly right about the hydrogen bomb," Rossi replied. "He just didn't get a chance to explain his train of thought. You said that Reid mentioned the word "tritium" on the phone."

"Yeah, right after he told me that the cult was planning to set off a hydrogen bomb, not an atomic bomb," Morgan recited verbatim.

"What if the cult blew up the subway, just like they had planned all along, but a disgruntled cult member planted a warning about the tritium?" Rossi speculated. "The disgruntled cult member left the anonymous tip, but he was afraid to be discovered by the cult, so he planted a warning instead of meeting the agent at the T station."

"What kind of warning would he leave?" asked JJ.

"I don't know," Rossi replied, "Something inconspicuous somewhere out of the way. Leaving a warning appears to be a noble act, but the cult member probably did it just to soothe his own guilty conscience. It would've been a half-hearted attempt. He would've hoped that someone would notice the warning at the T station. Lucky for us, we sent the Human Computer."

"Yeah, lucky for us," Morgan mumbled inaudibly. "You did the right thing, Hotch," he spoke clearly.

Hotch nodded from the back of the Round Table Room. In his mind's eye, he opened a drawer in a miniature oaken chest. He peeled off a few flakes of self-blame and deposited them into the drawer for safe-keeping. The flakes of self-blame left behind a miniscule void that he filled with a few drops of self-belief. His anxious glare smoothed into a concerned glower.

"Garcia!" Rossi slapped his hand onto the conference table.

"Yes, Old Italian Dude?" Garcia chirped brightly.

"The bombs were planted sometime during the day," Rossi said. "One or more of the cult members must have had access to the ticket booths. Search MBTA personnel cross-referenced with Charles Preston, CP1919, and cults in general. Find out if anyone recently left the cult. If we can find the anonymous caller, we might be able to interview him for details about the plot."

"You got it, Master Wonk Eye!" Garcia chirped more brightly.

She began tapping away on her laptop, eager for the chance to do something constructive. Rossi rubbed his fingers over his uneven eyes and quietly took the abuse.

"The explosions disabled the hub of the Boston subway system," Morgan said. "Good thing it's a Saturday. Otherwise, the whole city would be a madhouse in a few hours."

"Do you think that the cult is planning to target the subway again?" asked Dr. Bell. "Do you think that they've planted a nuclear device in the subway system?"

"That's the most obvious conclusion," Morgan replied. "But a hydrogen bomb planted anywhere within the city would destroy the entire city. A thermonuclear weapon is not a 'dirty bomb' that a terrorist group could make at will, as long as they acquired enough fissile material. A thermonuclear weapon requires far more sophistication. Garcia! Search for nuclear physicists or engineers with cult connections."

"Got it, Master Tilde Brows!" Garcia chirped unnecessarily brightly.

She began tapping away on a second laptop. Morgan rubbed his fingers over his meticulously groomed eyebrows and decided that Garcia must be extremely stressed out. Otherwise, she would never have abused him in such a manner.

"Don't you need a lot of fissile or fusile or whatever material to make a hydrogen bomb?" JJ asked. "Aren't nuclear warheads huge bullet-shaped containers that get dropped out of military airplanes?"

"Only when they were first used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki," Dr. Bell answered from her screen. "During the Cold War, the US military developed a line of portable nuclear weapons, called the Special Atomic Demolition Munition, or SADM. Each weapon was the size of a backpack, and they were designed for parachutists to carry into the field in the event of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. When detonated, the SADM would produce an explosion equivalent to 1 to 10 kilotons of TNT, depending on which version of the weapon was used. It would take out routes of passage for a Soviet tank convoy from East Germany to West Germany, specifically through the strategic Fulda Gap near Frankfurt. Besides destroying roads and bridges, the SADM would also irradiate the area and make it impassable for invading troops."

"So we could be looking for something as small as a backpack?" Prentiss asked.

"As far as I know," Dr. Bell replied, "No thermonuclear weapons exist in that size range. We do not have the technology to miniaturize hydrogen bombs. Not us or any other country," she added.

"And how many kilotons of TNT are released in a hydrogen bomb explosion?" JJ asked.

"10 to the 7th power," Morgan replied, "Popularly known as 10 million..."

"And how many people would that kill?" Hotch asked, "How much would we have to revise our casualty figures?"

"10 to the 6th power," Morgan replied.

"Popularly known as 1 million..." JJ whispered.

* * *

Park Street T Station  
October 16, 2010

The wall of rubble that greeted Reid at the Park Street T Station put a damper on his plans for the weekend.

The damage here was more extensive than the damage at the Government Center T Station. The explosion had collapsed a pile of rubble onto the stairs leading to the northbound tracks. They were the ones closest to the entrance from Boston Common. Reid had no choice but to follow the stairs to the southbound tracks, where the train normally delivered hordes of shoppers to Downtown Crossing.

"No matter," he thought, "Not a problem. If I can walk down one subway tunnel, I can walk down another. The Downtown Crossing T Station is only a block away."

He stepped to the edge of the platform and lowered himself into the subway tunnel. As soon as he landed on the tracks, he felt an intense urge to climb out of the sunken tunnel.

Dark and creepy as it was, the Green Line tunnel was a regular railroad track. The Red Line was a round tunnel that dipped five feet below the platform.

The Green Line track between Government Center and Park Street did not have a third rail. The Red Line, northbound and southbound, featured third rails along its entire length.

Reid tested his footing on the tracks opposite the third rail. The sunken tunnel was darker and creepier than the railroad tunnel. It offered no chance of escape if a train happened to hurtle down the tracks. Of course, at this time of night, the trains were resting, and the third rail was off, but no sane person could have avoided entertaining such unwelcome scenarios in such an unwelcome environment.

Reid swept his Maglite beam down the tracks ahead of him. The third rail stayed put, not budging an inch from its location on his right. As far as he could see, the third rail did not switch sides for the entire length of the subway tunnel. It had no reason to switch sides. A third rail that switched sides was a design failure, and any engineer who designed such a failure should be taken out to the woodshed and shot.

Reid knew about design failures, because he was an engineer himself. His knowledge comforted him. The Boston subway system had been in operation for over 100 years, and surely, in that span of time, all the most glaring design failures would have been eliminated. If the Maglite gave out on him in the middle of the subway tunnel, he would walk calmly down the left side of the tracks, and this way, he would not be electrocuted on a third rail that was not even on.

"Morgan is waiting for me," he thought. "I don't know if he heard what I said about the tritium. I don't know if he believed what I said about the tritium. I didn't exactly have time to explain myself before the phone gave out," he checked his cell phone again, looking for signal, finding only blankness.

"Everything depends on me getting through this subway tunnel," he thought, "Everything depends on me."

"Maybe I should go the other way," he thought, "Maybe I should go north, towards the Charles River. Who's to say that Downtown Crossing won't be blown up as well?"

"Who's to say that Charles/MGH won't be blown up as well?" a voice asked him. It was his own voice, the deep serious voice that his mind used to talk to itself.

"Going north would take me farther from City Hall, farther from my goal," he thought. "Morgan won't be there. The rest of the team won't be there. Downtown Crossing is only 500 feet away. I'll be there in no time!"

"What if it's been blown up?" the voice asked, "What are you going to do then?"

"I've said it once, and I'll say it again," the young man told the voice. "It's like an experiment. In an experiment, you can't just measure something once and be done with it. You have to measure everything in duplicate, so you can take account of errors in the measurement. The size of the error bar will tell you whether a result is statistically significant."

"You've already measured in duplicate," said the voice. "Government Center, Park Street - two T stations lying under piles of rubble. What more do you need?"

"That's not enough," the young man reasoned, "Duplicate measurements are not enough. If I want to do a quick-and-dirty experiment to test my apparatus, I would measure everything in duplicate. Afterwards, if my apparatus worked and I wanted to produce publishable results, I would have to measure everything in triplicate. In triplicate, at least...Downtown Crossing is the triplicate measurement..."

The man waited for the voice to respond, but the voice was silent. He had rationalized it away.

Reason formed the foundation for the young man's character, but the young man was not devoid of emotion. He was not a robot, and he could not ignore the faces of his friends in their bubbles of light. They beckoned him into the wrong direction.

For the young man, it was a misfortune. For the city, it was the best of fortunes.

If the young man ever escaped the subway tunnel, then his friends would never let him back in. One of his friends would just as soon slap a leash on him as he would let him into another subway tunnel. Such an action would be unfortunate for all involved - the man, the friend, and the city.

"Everything depends on me," the young man told himself.

To his surprise, the bold thought brought him comfort. He had a clear mission. He was a man of action.

He adjusted his baseball cap over his eyes again. He was no longer sweating. He was SSA Derek Morgan - strong, dependable, and unafraid of the dark - as he walked into the black maw leading to the triplicate measurement.


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Author's Note: Here is the second in my series of stories, starring Reid and each character in turn. The full list is on my profile page. Please R & R!

* * *

Chapter 5

Downtown Crossing T Station  
October 16, 2010

At exactly 4:45 AM, before the T would normally have opened, a second series of explosions destroyed a second series of T stations.

Like the first series, the second series destroyed the ticket booths near the entrances, making them impassable for investigative teams who wished to enter the stations. Unlike the first series, the second series destroyed the tracks as well, making them impassable for investigative individuals who wished to exit the tunnels.

On the Red Line, Charles/MGH was down. The bomb had been planted in the ceiling of the subway tunnel. When the bomb had detonated, the ceiling had collapsed, raining a pile of rubble onto the tracks below. Neither the northbound or southbound tracks were accessible.

Charles/MGH was the first stop in Boston on the southbound Red Line from Cambridge, directly across the Charles River. The station was north of Park Street, which was north of Downtown Crossing, which was north of South Station. The four stations linked the busiest portion of the Red Line in Boston. On the northern end, Charles/MGH was down. On the southern end, South Station was also down.

On the Green Line, Boylston was down, as was Haymarket at its intersection with the Orange Line. That blocked off the northern and southern escape routes for the Green Line.

On the Orange Line, which intersected the Red Line at Downtown Crossing, Chinatown was down, as was Haymarket at its intersection with the Green Line. That blocked off the northern and southern escape routes for the Orange Line.

Reid did not need to perform his experiment in quadruplicate. As soon as he saw the pile of rubble at Downtown Crossing, he knew that State Street would look exactly the same.

On the Blue Line, State Street had been blown up in the first series. To the west, Government Center had also been blown up in the first series. That left only Bowdoin and Aquarium to be blown up in the second series, blocking off the eastern and western escape routes for the Blue Line.

The hub-and-spokes system was not having a good day. The inner hub - Government Center, Park Street, Downtown Crossing, and State Street - had been broken for several hours. Now, the outer hub - Charles/MGH, South Station, Boylston, Haymarket, Chinatown, Bowdoin, and Aquarium - was also broken.

Inside the hub, a physical body found itself trapped inside a physical box. The physical body was free to wander within the physical box, while the metaphysical mind was free to wander outside the physical box. The body and the mind wandered together, here, there, and everywhere, until the body found a sporadic signal and the mind found a sporadic noise.

* * *

Boston City Hall Situation Room  
October 16, 2010

"Morgan? Can you hear me?" a voice kicked Morgan's brain into high alert.

"Reid! Yes! I hear you loud and clear!" Morgan yelled in his boomingest voice.

"I'm at Downtown Crossing...Tunnels...Blown up...South Station," the static kicked in immediately.

"Stay put, Reid! We're going to get you out of there!"

"Tracks...Ceiling..." signal cut through the noise.

"Reid! Stay with me! We know about the tritium and the H-bomb! We're digging through the rubble...We'll be there soon!"

"Station...Hub..." noise drowned out signal.

"Dun-dun!" the network dropped the call.

"Shit!" Morgan yelled. He dialed and re-dialed to no avail. He made to slam the cell phone against the floor, then remembered that it was his only link to Reid. He set it gently onto the conference table and checked the bars for signal and battery before turning towards the BAU screen.

"He's alive," Morgan informed the team. "He's alive enough to have made it from Government Center to Downtown Crossing. He must have gone through the subway tunnels."

Five faces closed their eyes with sighs of relief. JJ was the first to recover.

"What else did he say?" she asked, her lips quivering slightly. She shuddered, imagining herself edging down a subway tunnel in the dark. Her stomach fluttered uncontrollably.

"I couldn't make out most of it," Morgan sighed, "Something about the tracks, something about the ceiling. But I'm pretty sure that he knows about the second series of explosions, at least the one at South Station. He must have heard it through the Red Line tunnels."

"How long will it take to dig through the rubble?" Prentiss asked.

"A few hours at least," Morgan replied. "Agent Laurentis tells me that the crews are focusing their efforts on one location, Park Street, so they can clear one entrance to get into the subway system. They're ignoring the other stations for now. The engineers have made an assessment. Some of the stations, such as Government Center, are unstable and at risk for collapse. They would be too dangerous to enter, even if the entrances were clear."

"What about Downtown Crossing?" Rossi asked.

"They haven't cleared any of the rubble at Downtown Crossing," Morgan replied. "At this point, it would be faster to finish clearing the rubble at Park Street. We can tunnel through to Downtown Crossing from there. I'm waiting for Agent Laurentis to call me back. He promised that he'd call me as soon as they cleared the station."

"As soon as that happens, I'm going in," he clarified. He tunneled his eyes through the screen towards Hotch, who nodded his approval.

"Why can't the crews tunnel through from Charles/MGH or South Station?" Prentiss asked. "It would be easier than digging up Park Street."

"I don't think that finding Reid is their top priority," Morgan muttered. "Agent Laurentis told me so himself. He said that he wasn't willing to risk multiple lives to save one life."

"...Asshats..." Morgan thought he heard Prentiss mumble through the speakerphone. He didn't have complete information, but he suspected that the tracks were blocked off by rubble from the explosions. Reid had mentioned the words "tracks" and "ceiling", and Morgan had drawn the conclusion that the bombs must have blown up the ceilings of the subway tunnels and rained rubble upon the tracks. The BAU was reduced to this - drawing detailed conclusions from lone words plucked out of the ether.

"Wait! What about Downtown Crossing?" Garcia asked.

"What about it?" JJ asked.

"Is that one of the unstable stations? One of the stations at risk for collapse?" Garcia screeched.

"I don't know! No one mentioned anything about Downtown Crossing," Morgan realized. "Oh no...no, no, no..." he picked up his cell phone to dial Agent Laurentis.

Hotch's concerned glower furrowed into an anxious glare. Flakes of self-blame rained down from a darkening sky and landed into drops of self-belief. Within the drops, the flakes decayed with a half-life of 1.3373 seconds, releasing 17.6 MeV of energy with each radioactive decay. It took no time at all for the flakes to vaporize the drops.

* * *

Downtown Crossing T Station  
October 16, 2010

For five blissful minutes, Reid cat-napped on a dirty bench in the Downtown Crossing T Station. When he woke up, he discovered that no time had passed and everything was just the same. He was still tired, hungry, and thirsty.

He rubbed his ears, pleased to find that they were no longer ringing. They had started ringing with the first explosion at Government Center. They had continued ringing with the journey down the subway tunnels. They had stopped ringing for a few minutes when he had spoken to Morgan on the phone. They had continued ringing afterwards, happy to pick up right where they left off, with the reverberations from the explosion at South Station. With the refreshment of a cat-nap, they had stopped ringing for good.

The cat-napper yawned and removed his baseball cap to smooth out his hair. His hair was extremely disheveled, but it was still clean, because the cap had absorbed most of the dust and debris. A few hours earlier, the cap had been brand spanking new in its plastic wrappings. Now, the cap was filthy, distressed, and torn. The cap-wearer reinstated the cap to its rightful place upon his head. He rather enjoyed his new look.

Despite the situation, Reid kept a small portion of his mind at ease, cordoned off with yellow caution tape. Now that he had spoken to Morgan, he had heard the words that he wanted to hear. Morgan had told him, loud and clear, that the team knew about the tritium and the H-bomb. His tone had implied that the team believed the theory. Again, there had not been time to provide scientific evidence, but the tone had told Reid all that he needed to know.

Downtown Crossing had been the correct choice after all. If Reid had gone to Charles/MGH, he might have been flattened by a shower of bricks raining down from the ceiling of the subway tunnel. Instead, he was safe on an intact subway platform. Reason had lost out to emotion, but everything had worked out in his favor.

He briefly wondered why. He did not believe in karma, but someone who did believe would have pointed out the extraordinary volumes of karma that he had already built up during his relatively short life. Someone would have used karma to make sense of the situation. In the next reincarnation cycle, Reid was bound to be a minor deity, at least.

In this cycle, Reid hoped that the next cycle would hold off for a few more decades. He believed in facts rather than karma, so he decided to consider the facts before him. It was time to elucidate his theory.

The facts stated that two series of explosions had occurred in the Boston subway system within a few hours of each other. The first series had sealed the inner hub. The second series had sealed the outer hub.

The second series had been more destructive than the first series. Level of destruction usually correlated with level of importance. If one wished to blow up the Dunkin Donuts across the street, one might use a Molotov cocktail. If one wished to blow up Fenway Park, one might use a fertilizer bomb. If one wished to blow up the Massachusetts State House, one might use a backpack nuke.

"No, no, no," Reid thought. "I've got it all wrong. I've got it all backwards. Fenway Park is far more important than the Massachusetts State House, so I...uh...one...would use the backpack nuke there instead."

The only thing that bothered Reid about his working theory was the hierarchy of the T stations within the subway system. The second series of stations was far less prestigious than the first series. No one would care if Bowdoin got blown up and were left to rot. Same for Aquarium, Charles/MGH, and Chinatown. Boston was a very small city. One could get off at any station in the inner hub and walk to any station in the outer hub within a matter of minutes. The only function of the second series was to block off the inner hub.

The inner hub had to be choked off from the outside world, but it had to remain functional. The entrances were buried, and some of the first level platforms were damaged, but the tracks themselves remained functional. The stations were still connected in an irregular quadrilateral. The tracks, with their running rails, third rail, and ties intact, would still allow a train to pass through.

In war, the hub represented a fortress. The enemy would lay siege to the fortress, trying to break it down with their picks, shovels, and bulldozers, but the fortress would hold, because the fortress carried the blessing of the Supreme Being. The Supreme Being would never let his subjects come to harm. He would strike down all who dared oppose them.

Reid wondered who the Supreme Being was and what the Supreme Being was like for the CP1919 cult. If he understood the Supreme Being, then he might be able to piece together the Supreme Plot. As long as he didn't understand the Supreme Being, he had no choice but to fall back on his reserves.

His reserves stepped forward from their battle stations. The elderly experienced one named Occam's Razor told him that a third explosion or series of explosions was going to occur in the Boston subway system. If the first series had created the fortress and if the second series had sealed the fortress, then the third series would liberate the fortress. Instead of waiting for the enemy to lay siege to them, the inhabitants of the fortress would lay siege to the enemy. They would storm out of the gates and wreak havoc upon the tent city outside. They would chase down and obliterate every fleeing soldier, even if they destroyed themselves in the process. They would ascend to a higher plane, and the Supreme Being would be there to offer his warm embrace.

Everything pointed towards the fortress as the location for the device. Reid was sure that the device lived within the T. Specifically, he was sure that the device lived within the quadrilateral that he himself inhabited. Even more specifically, he was sure the tracks had something to do with the operation of the device.

The believers had been careless. One of them had gone astray, and the hive had failed to notice. A lowly worker bee had allowed a spy into the hive. Sooner or later, the spy would find a way to undermine the hive. When that happened, the hive would cry out to the Supreme Being for help, but the Supreme Being would not be there to answer them. Without the Supreme Being to guide them, the hive would split apart, and the workers would find themselves fractured. Some of them would try to set up their own hives, but none of the new hives would last for long. Workers would move from one hive to another, but they would never again find the unity that had bound together the first hive. Fission and fusion, fusion and fission - that was the way of the hive. Eventually, each worker would find himself faithless and alone.

The spy yawned and stretched out his arms, affording himself the luxury of comfort. He understood that any moment could be his last. His theories had told him nothing about the timeline of the liberation. They had yet to pinpoint the exact location of the liberator. After all, the spy did not have complete information, and he did not exist in a vacuum. He had contacts outside the fortress, and he depended on their operations as much as he depended on his own.

For the moment, Reid's only operation was to lie down on the bench and think. He recalled a story that he had once heard about the French philosopher-scientist Rene Descartes. When he was little, Rene Descartes had always hated getting out of bed in the morning. To avoid getting out of bed, Rene Descartes had often pretended to be ill. While the other children performed their aristocratic morning rituals, Rene Descartes lay in bed and thought about all manner of things. He thought most clearly when he lay on his back, because his brain had easier access to the pumpings of his heart, which did not have to work quite as hard to deliver blood in a direction opposite the gravitational force that had yet to be discovered. Eventually, childhood musings had turned into adulthood thinkings, and Rene Descartes had spoken the ubiquitous phrase, "I think, therefore I am."

Reid stretched out on his dirty bench and dangled his legs off the end. In calmer times, he could have passed for one of the homeless people who took shelter in the T station during Channel 7 Stormforce Alerts. Some of the homeless people were quite studious. There was an old lady in Harvard Square who spend most of her time reading on a bench. There was a middle-aged man with a dog who collected used books from passersby and sold them for a few dollars apiece on Mass. Ave. Homeless people, unlike worker bees, had all the time in the world to think. Reid imagined himself as one of them, a noble homeless Rene Descartes who would lie here and think. He would think about the device - where it was located, when it would go off, how it was activated, how it was de-activated. He would let his mind wander, inside and outside the box, until it discovered something that it wanted to tell him.

Then, he would listen to his deep serious voice. It would tell him what to do, and he would spring up to act.

All the while, he would check his cell phone for flickers of signal. If he were lucky, another deep serious voice would infiltrate the fortress. If it told him what to do, he would listen to it as well. No matter who told him what, when the time came, he would spring up to act.

* * *

Boston City Hall Situation Room  
October 16, 2010

"Agent Laurentis just returned my call," Morgan barged back into the Situation Room after his trip to the restroom. "He's not sure about the condition of Downtown Crossing. So far, the exterior is stable, but no one knows about the interior. Downtown Crossing is one stop north of South Station, and a huge section of the roof caved in over South Station. The rubble blocked off all the tracks. The engineers are working to assess whether the roof collapse destabilized any other structures, especially those around Downtown Crossing. They're working on it full-time. I made sure of it."

"Good," Hotch said, "Keep us posted on the jet. We're heading over to the airport now. We'll be there in an hour-and-a-half."

"Wait, Hotch, wait," Morgan replied.

"What's the problem?" Hotch asked.

"I'm going to ask you to do me a favor," Morgan answered.

"What are you talking about?" Hotch asked.

"I really hope that you'll consider it," Morgan replied.

"Consider what?" Hotch asked.

"Spit it out, Morgan," Prentiss demanded.

"I'm going to ask you to stay put," said Morgan, "Please don't come to Boston."

"I don't want to hear any arguments!" he continued. "You can help me from Quantico. We can continue teleconferencing. They've got everything set up perfectly in this room. You don't have to be here in person."

"Think about Jack, Hotch," he continued further. "Think about Henry and Will, JJ."

"There's no need to put anyone else in danger," he wouldn't stop continuing. "Hotch, you're the one who told me to take the lead on this case. I'm taking the lead, and I'm asking you to follow."

"You owe me one, Hotch," he whispered.

Hotch glanced, expressionless and mute, at JJ standing beside him. "I'll cancel the jet," JJ picked up her cell phone.

"CP1919! CP1919!" Garcia screamed from her laptop. "LGM1! LGM!"

"What?" several voices asked.

"LGM1!" Garcia screamed again, "Little Green Men 1!"

"Correct me if I'm wrong, Garcia, but did you just say something about 'little green men'?" Rossi asked.

"I should've realized this earlier!" Garcia waved her hands in the air and jumped out of her chair as if it were on fire. "That was dumb, Garcia! I can't believe you were so dumb, Garcia! You were an astronomy major in college! You should've realized this earlier! Why won't you stop being dumb?" she screamed spastically to herself while everyone else gestured wildly, exhorting her to spit it the hell out.

"Known what? Known what?" Prentiss exclaimed.

"Say it!" JJ yelled in a frenzied un-JJ-like manner.

"CP1919 was the first pulsar ever discovered," Garcia explained.

Everyone's faces fell. They had expected to hear an exact location for the device or a brilliant scheme for getting Reid out of the subway tunnels. Instead, they were hearing a boring astronomy lesson.

"Pul-sar?" Rossi split up the word incorrectly.

"A pulsar is a neutron star that emits a beam of radiation as it rotates on its axis," Garcia commenced the lesson. "The radiation, radio waves in the case of CP1919, is only detectable when the beam is pointed directly at the Earth. As the star rotates, the beam rotates with it, so we detect the radiation as pulses separated by specific time intervals. The time intervals are extremely precise. Each pulsar has its own period, and the periods range from a few milliseconds to a few seconds."

"Science-y," JJ remarked, rolling her eyes skyward in a JJ-like manner.

"When the pulses were first detected in the late '60s, no one in the astronomical community knew how to interpret them. The astronomers who made the discovery seriously entertained the idea that they were signals from an extraterrestrial civilization. That's why they dubbed the radio source 'LGM1' for 'Little Green Men 1'. Of course, it was later explained that the pulses came from a newly documented type of star. The star was renamed CP1919, then renamed again later. It's now called PSR something or other, PSR for pulsar."

Silence greeted the conclusion of the lesson. Morgan was the first to break the silence.

"Garcia?" he asked hesitantly, "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"That depends on what you're thinking," Garcia replied hesitantly.

"Are we dealing with a UFO cult?" Morgan asked.


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Author's Note: Here is the second in my series of stories, starring Reid and each character in turn. The full list is on my profile page. Please R & R!

* * *

Chapter 6

Boston City Hall Situation Room  
October 16, 2010

Garcia hummed the "Twilight Zone" music on her way out of the Round Table Room. She headed towards her office to pick up the three additional laptops that she stored in a filing cabinet for emergencies. Searching multiple databases at once while re-writing and re-compiling software modules required a lot of computing power.

JJ followed Garcia out and headed towards her own office. She wanted to call Will to smooth things over with him. During her last coffee break, he had ordered her not to go to Boston. He had ordered her to quit her job and come home right away. She had snapped at him and demanded that he tell her what they were going to live on if she quit her job. He had snapped back and demanded that she tell him what Henry was going to do without a mother. Now, she was relieved that she didn't have to go to Boston and ashamed that she didn't want to go to Boston. She had no control over her own life, not even her own state of living or dying, but the least she could do was smooth things over with her husband. She longed to hear his voice, warm and stable with that unique New Orleans zest.

Prentiss followed JJ out and headed towards her desk in the bullpen. She imagined herself sitting at her desk on a dreary wintry morning six months from now. For some reason, a stranger was sitting at the desk across from her, and when she turned around, she discovered another stranger sitting at the desk on her other side. The strangers were the newest members of the BAU. They were here to replace Morgan and Reid, who had been blown up in a cult-perpetrated nuclear attack, along with the entire city of Boston. She glared at them furtively from her computer screen. She didn't want them replacing her fallen colleagues, so she blew and blew and blew until they diffused into the air. She waved her hands to clear them away, plopped wearily into her chair, and reached into her bottom desk drawer. The drawer contained a giant nine-inch-tall popping doll, which Emily Prentiss retrieved and squeezed until its incredulous red eyes bugged four inches out of their sockets.

Rossi followed Prentiss out and pretended to head towards his office. After five seconds of pretense, he doubled back to the door of the Round Table Room to eavesdrop on the proceedings within. He hoped that Hotch and Morgan would clear the air between them, before the team had to dive face first into the astoundingly bizarre world of UFO cults.

"I'm sorry about what I said earlier, Hotch," Morgan apologized. "Especially the "you owe me" part. I shouldn't have said it, because it's not true. You don't owe me anything."

"Thanks, Morgan," Hotch accepted the apology. "I may not owe you anything, but I do owe someone something."

"You and I both know that's the last thing on Reid's mind," Morgan corrected his boss. "No one could have predicted what was going to happen in the subway. You shouldn't blame yourself."

"I know," Hotch replied, "But I do blame myself, and I will blame myself, at least until Reid gets back."

"You had to send someone," Morgan said. "Someone had to go. If Reid and I hadn't been in Boston, someone else would've gone. Someone else's boss would've sent someone else into a trap. It's part of the job. It's part of being the boss."

"Remember that time when Reid performed his little magic trick on the train with Elle?" Hotch reminisced. "Reid was the one who offered to go, and Gideon was the one who let him go. You were the one who wanted to go, and I was the one who didn't want anyone to go."

"Yeah, that's our line of work, Hotch," Morgan said, "Good old times with train psychos! I almost had a heart attack when Bryar ordered Reid to 'turn it on'," he psycho-ated his voice.

"Gideon looked like he was going to explode when he heard the gunshot," Hotch remembered. "I felt like I was walking on hot coals the whole time that Reid and Elle were in there. I was sweating like a pig."

"Yet, you still wouldn't take off your jacket," Morgan commented, "You wouldn't even loosen your tie."

"I'm the Unit Chief," Hotch smiled, "I have to set certain standards. With your Fruit-of-the-Loom T-shirts and Reid's sweater vests and Garcia's daily Halloween costumes, someone's got to maintain a little dignity in the BAU. We're an elite team, you know."

"Gideon had some pretty awful get-ups too," Morgan thought back. "He used to wear those ugly plaid shirts in all the colors of the rainbow, remember?"

"Yeah, Section Chief Erin Strauss used to give me dirty looks about that," Hotch smiled again. "Then, Reid joined the team and started wearing the same ugly plaid shirts. I think he was deliberately imitating Gideon's 'style'."

"That's what I've always thought too!" Morgan replied. "I never thought I'd get it confirmed! Good thing Geek Boy eventually found his own 'style'. Those short-sleeved plaid shirts did not work for him. They made him look even skinnier. I bet they scared away all the ladies too."

"They didn't scare away Hollywood starlet Lila Archer," Hotch teased Reid from afar.

"Reid wasn't the only one who got molested on that case," Morgan suppressed his laughter. "Gideon mentioned that a lesbian artist approached him at the gallery. She was attracted to him, because he reminded her of her father!"

Hotch chuckled knowingly, then turned serious. "Sometimes, I miss Gideon," he revealed. "When he was with us, I could always maintain some semblance of distance between myself and the cases. I could depend on his expertise. I could defer to him, because he was older and wiser and smarter. I could stand in the background, because he was the one who was willing to get his hands dirty."

"Gideon wouldn't have had it any other way," Morgan replied, "You know that, Hotch."

"I know," Hotch said, "But it doesn't take away my share of the responsibility. Gideon had to send Reid onto that train. Gideon had to decide which wire to cut on that forged bomb. Gideon had to face down Frank Breitkopf. Gideon had to face himself after what happened in Boston, what happened with Adrian Bale and the six dead agents. Look what it did to him."

"That's the cost of leadership, Hotch," Morgan said. "Forget leadership! That's the cost of the job."

"Yes," Hotch chuckled mirthlessly. "I send Elle home, and Randall Garner shoots her in her living room. I send Reid and JJ to interview a witness, and they nearly get killed at Tobias Hankel's farm. At least, Gideon knew exactly what he was doing. I never foresaw the consequences of my decisions, not then and not now."

"Last I heard, Hotch, clairvoyance isn't a job requirement for a Unit Chief," Morgan replied.

"You could be a Unit Chief, Morgan," Hotch pointed out. "Don't you ever think about it? I would recommend you over myself any day."

"You want me to be Unit Chief of this insane asylum?" Morgan gestured towards the Round Table Room. "No, thanks! I think I'll pass!"

"I'm serious," Hotch said. "More than once, I've wondered if I should just step down for good. If I should've stepped down for good, after..."

"I know, Hotch," Morgan cut him off before he could torture himself with Haley. "Any sane person would've wondered the exact same thing. But as long as you want to be here, we want you here...I want you here...as the Unit Chief. It is our fortune to have you as the Unit Chief," Morgan echoed Hotch.

"Thanks," Hotch nodded quietly. "But remember, you're the lead on this case. When the team returns, we're going to psychoanalyze this UFO cult to the Andromeda Galaxy and back, and we're going to get your 'Pretty Boy' out of those subway tunnels."

"Oh, that's low, Hotch," Morgan laughed in reply. "Please! Please do me another favor! Never ever refer to Reid as my 'Pretty Boy' ever again!"

"You got it!" Hotch promised Morgan.

"What do we know about UFO cults?" he asked the rest of the team as they filed back into the Round Table Room.

Prentiss handed Hotch a mug of strong black coffee, while Morgan made himself a milder fix, with a smidgeon of creamer and a sprinkle of sugar. Over their cups of coffee, the two Unit Chiefs - the two who had taken turns stepping up and down, down and up - each found a reservoir of belief within their irrational hearts.

"Call it blind faith," each told himself, "But it's all I have, and I'm not letting it go. I just hope the kid has it too, because we're going to need it, and him, before this is all over."

* * *

Downtown Crossing T Station  
October 16, 2010

To Dr. Spencer Reid, the pre-nuclear present was almost indistinguishable from the post-nuclear future.

He was alone, wandering the tunnels and platforms of the subway system. The bomb had gone off a couple of miles distant, and he had survived the initial blast. He had taken shelter underground to protect himself from the radioactive fallout.

In the central blast zone, everyone had died of instant vaporization. In the peripheral blast zone, everyone had died of radiation sickness within a few hours of the blast. Somehow, Reid had survived, and he was determined to pursue a continued existence, even if it meant becoming one of the mole people of the subway system.

Reid reasoned correctly that he was not the only one who had survived the blast. There must have been others like him, who had been genetically less susceptible to the immediate effects of radiation poisoning. They would hang on, living hand-to-mouth in a dystopian urban anarchy, until they succumbed to some kind of cancer, most likely leukemia, that would develop from their exposure to ionizing radiation. Some of them would find each other and band together to eke out a living in the remaining intact structures. Others would find themselves alone, save for the sporadic signals that appeared every once in awhile on their signaling devices. After a few days, when the loners had lost track of time, they would stop checking the signals. They would be content to shrink into a corner of the subway, careful to avoid the last vestiges of humanity that polluted the formerly vibrant city.

On the first day after the blast, food and water would still be abundant, as long as one did not have to share.

Reid stared at the empty vending machine taunting him with its empty shelves. He wondered if there were any candy bars trapped in the bowels of the machine, between the shelves and the bin, where people who paid for candy did not always receive candy. He considered breaking through the glass window, but decided against it when he realized that the hidden candy was likely legacy candy from the '70s or '80s. Eating such candy would be akin to taking a stroll through the radioactive fallout.

He turned his attention to the snack stand.

The snack stand was secured with a sliding metal door that covered up the goodies within. The proprietor did not believe the legends about subway mole people, so he had employed only a single metal lock to protect the fortress. It was a pin-and-tumbler lock, in which a set of pins running up and down in the lock prevented the plug from turning, as it would turn when a key in the keyhole pushed the pins out of the way. It was a simple system, but it required an understanding of locks and some prior experience.

Reid thanked his lucky stars that he had spent so much time picking locks in college.

He unclipped a pair of long skinny tools from his keychain. The tools, along with the Maglite, were part of his "just-in-case" keychain paraphernalia. He owned a pick and a tension wrench, and those were all that he needed to launch an attack upon the snack stand fortress.

First, he leaned down next to the door and cleared the drowsiness out of his eyes. Next, he inserted the tension wrench into the keyhole and turned the plug slightly, as far as it would go, creating a tiny ledge for the upper pins to sit on. He held the plug in place with the wrench, so he could maintain the ledge while he manipulated the pins. He inserted the pick into the keyhole and pushed up the farthest pin until he heard a click. The click meant that the upper pin had landed on the ledge, so it was no longer blocking the shear line and preventing the plug from turning. He did the same for the four other pins, letting out a satisfied little whistle every time a pin landed on the ledge. When all five pins were completely retracted into their housings, the plug was free to turn, and the lock snapped open with an extra burst of pressure from the wrench.

Reid lifted up the sliding door. Shelves of candy, cookies, chips, and beverages greeted him within the fortress. There was even a roller grill for making hot dogs and a supply of frozen hot dogs in an under-counter fridge. All the money had been cleared out of the cash register, but that didn't matter anymore, because money was no longer a part of the new world order. Bartering had awakened from its long slumber to supplant money.

Reid smiled widely, wiping the sad distant expression out of his eyes. Even mole people indulged in their little moments of joy.

He stormed the fortress, picking out a beverage and an assorted collection of Little Debbie treats. He munched happily upon them while checking his signaling device for beeps from the outside world. He was shocked to discover a bar of signal, flickering on and off, over the northbound subway track. He stepped to the edge of the platform and held the device over the track, mystified that signal would appear at such an unlikely location. The bar appeared and disappeared repeatedly without resolving itself into a clear signal. Reid tested the entire length of the platform, finally settling at a spot near the tunnel entrance. There, he spotted two bars of signal, tapped his foot in excitement, and slipped upon a wad of tissue paper stuck to the platform floor.

The Twinkie flew to the right, and the Ho-Ho flew to the left. Reid flew downwards, falling sideways into the sunken tunnel and landing in a heap upon the ties that ran perpendicular to the running rails. He didn't take a single moment to recover before he leaped up from the fall. If he had fallen in any other location, he would have taken a moment to wipe off a faceful of pebbles from the ballast under the ties. He would have taken another moment to let the nerve endings calm themselves on his bruised right side. He might even have taken a moment to think about where he was.

Instead, because the mind knew that the body had fallen into a dark subway tunnel, the mind ordered the body to get up.

"Get up! Get up! Get up!" the mind screamed to the body.

The body obeyed, and its owner sat up immediately, eager to escape the tunnel. With arms and legs that had been shaken and bruised in the fall, the body needed a helping hand, so it reached out to steady itself upon the nearest support structure. Before he could stop himself, Reid reached out and grabbed the third rail.

"Bzzzzzzz!" the third rail buzzed.

* * *

Halfway through the insanity. Sorry for the evil cliff-hanger. I couldn't resist. Thanks to all readers and reviewers!


	7. Chapter 7

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Author's Note: Much of the subway information in this chapter is accurate, but some is made up for story purposes. This is where the story starts to look more and more like a Sci-Fi Channel Disaster Movie. D'oh!

* * *

Chapter 7

Downtown Crossing T Station  
October 16, 2010

The third rail was not supposed to be on, but it was.

It was on at 100 volts, far below its standard operating capacity of 600 volts. Dry unbroken human skin had a resistance of 100,000 ohms. The 100 volts would fry up some of that skin and shave some of those thousands off the 100,000 ohms, but the current that coursed through the human body would still be measured as a few milliamperes. A few milliamperes was not enough current to cause ventricular fibrillation in the heart.

In North America, household electricity operated at 110 volts. Getting shocked through the third rail was like getting shocked through the lightbulb socket of a lamp. The heart would palpitate, but it would not stop.

Reid snatched his hand away from the third rail and jumped up from the tracks. His heart jumped up with him, threatening to beat its way out of his chest. For twenty or thirty seconds, he could neither inhale or exhale. He could not swallow. Then, as quickly as they had come, the palpitations passed. The heart returned to its normal rhythm, and the lungs returned to their normal bellows.

The brain ramped up to its highest voltage. The body ached with bruises and burned with scrapes, but the mind exulted. It thanked its clumsy unreliable vehicle. The vehicle had provided the data, and the driver had made sense of the data, all within a single minute.

"It's all so obvious," the driver chided itself. "You should've figured out it earlier."

* * *

Park Street T Station  
October 16, 2010

SSA Derek Morgan stood, arms crossed over his chest, in front of a Finagle-A-Bagel on Tremont Street, across from Boston Common. The bulldozers that normally cleared away rotten produce at Haymarket, Boston's giant open-air fruit-and-vegetable stand, were now clearing away the last heaps of rubble from the main entrance of the Park Street T Station. Soon, Morgan would lead a team of FBI and Bomb Squad personnel into the damaged T station. Their primary mission was to search the hub of the subway system, looking for a thermonuclear device planted by a UFO cult. Their secondary mission was to locate Dr. Spencer Reid, who had been living out a post-nuclear future in the pre-nuclear present for the past six hours.

"Ring! Ring!" Morgan's cell phone wailed at its highest volume.

"Reid!" Morgan yelled without checking the caller ID.

"Morgan? I'm getting signal again! Two bars on the subway track!" Reid declared gleefully. "I've discovered something! The cult is planning to detonate the device using an electrical discharge through the third rail. The third rail isn't supposed to be on, but it is!"

"What? The third rail? Detonation through the third rail? How do you know all this?" Morgan rushed the words, afraid that the network would drop the call again.

"I touched the third rail...I touched it accidentally. It's definitely on! It gave me a little shock."

"You shocked yourself on the third rail?" Morgan yelled, "You're alive to tell me this?"

"It's not on at full capacity. It felt like I was getting shocked with household electricity. I'd guess 100 volts at most."

"Wait, Reid, wait! Stay exactly where you are! I need to ask someone something," Morgan waved at one of the MBTA engineers to come over.

"Why is the third rail on?" Morgan demanded.

"It's not on," the engineer replied.

"It is!" Morgan pointed at the engineer. "Our agent, the one who's been missing for several hours, just called me from Downtown Crossing. He said that he shocked himself on the third rail. He's still on the phone with me. Reid, are you there?" he spoke into the phone.

"Yeah, I've still got two bars!" Reid answered.

"He shocked himself?" the engineer asked. "The third rail shouldn't be on, not at any voltage. The T isn't operating today or tomorrow or the next day, so the generating stations aren't sending anything through."

"How do you operate the third rail?" Morgan asked.

"We send direct current through at 600 volts from a generating station in Braintree," the engineer explained. "We have feeder stations at various locations around the system, providing auxiliary capacity to compensate for resistance through the rails."

"Can you send current through the feeder stations?" Morgan asked.

"Yes, but not nearly as much," the engineer replied. "It takes awhile for the capacity to ramp up at a feeder station, and the capacity would have to be targeted..."

"How long does it take to ramp up from 100 volts to 600 volts?" Morgan cut him off.

"It depends on what the ramping up is for," the engineer said. "If the generating station isn't operating, we can use a series of feeder stations to power one train at a time through one tunnel at a time."

"That doesn't answer my question!" Morgan demanded. "How long does it take to ramp up to 600 volts?"

"At full capacity, with all our downtown-based feeder stations operating, we could ramp up in thirty minutes," the engineer replied.

"Thirty minutes?" Morgan repeated back, "Thirty minutes!"

"But only one of our downtown feeder stations is working right now," the engineer said. "The one at South Station is working. I mean...it's reporting that it's online. The feeder station doesn't seem to have been damaged in the explosion, but it's not supposed to be operating today. It normally sends current through the Red Line in both directions, towards Broadway and Downtown Crossing."

"That's where Reid is!" Morgan gestured towards his cell phone. He suddenly remembered that Reid was still on the line.

"Reid! Are you there?" he asked.

"Yeah, Morgan," Reid replied. "I can't believe I'm still getting signal."

"I have an MBTA engineer here with me," Morgan said. "He just told me that the feeder station at South Station is capable of sending current through the third rail at Downtown Crossing."

"Yes!" Reid answered, "That's got to be the voltage source. It's going to take awhile to ramp up the voltage from a feeder station. An exploding-bridgewire detonator in a nuclear device requires a high-current fast pulse to trigger the initial explosion. That requires at least 600 volts through the third rail, maybe up to 1200 volts, but I don't know if the Boston system is capable of such a high voltage. I don't know the system here. Ask the engineer how long it would take to ramp up to 1200 volts!"

"How long would it take to ramp up to 1200 volts?" Morgan asked the engineer.

"Our system doesn't run at 1200 volts," the engineer replied. "I mean...not in practice...I guess...theoretically..."

"Can it ever reach a maximum of 1200 volts, even for a few seconds at a time?" Morgan pushed the man. "In practice, not in theory!"

"For a few seconds, yes," the engineer replied. "We'd never max out the system like that, but it's definitely possible for a very short duration. It would take at least six hours to ramp up. We've never done it before, not even during system tests..."

"Six hours! Six hours!" Morgan's eyes filled with hope. "Reid! Six hours!" he yelled into the phone.

"I heard you the first two times," Reid snarked. "We have at least six hours before the city gets nuked. We have a timeline."

"I'm going to South Station," Morgan declared. "That psycho cult has to have someone there right now. One of them has to be an MBTA employee. There's no other way for them to get access to the third rail."

"Is there? Is there?" he asked the engineer.

"No, there isn't," the engineer replied. "Normally, the current from the generating station has to pass through the feeder stations to get to the subway lines. There's no other..."

"Got it!" Morgan waved him off. "I'm going to South Station, Reid. I'm going to rip that cult into pieces and serve them up as minced meat pie before the day is over."

"Wait, wait!" Reid stopped him. "Didn't they blow up South Station? I heard it through the tunnels."

"Shit!" Morgan remembered. "The roof collapsed over the tunnels, both the northbound and southbound tunnels. Can you still send current through the third rail with rubble on the tracks?" he asked the engineer.

"Yeah, as long as the third rail isn't severely damaged," the engineer replied. "Third rail electrification is very simple. The third rail is just a bunch of high-conductivity steel beams wire-bonded together to form a continuous conduit for high-voltage current."

"We need to dig out South Station," Morgan said. "One or all of those psycho bastards is in there operating the feeder station right now. They probably never left for the night. They probably planted the bombs and blew up the station with themselves inside."

"I agree," said Reid. "We need to get in there. You need to get in there!"

"Now you're talking!" Morgan replied excitedly. "OK, we have six hours until the cult can even think about setting off the device. In six hours, I can make those little bastards wish that they had never been born."

Reid half-snorted and half-snickered through the cell phone. He couldn't believe his luck. Everything was coming together. Even the cell phone signal was holding steady.

"I'm kidding, Reid," said Morgan. "I'm not going to do anything to them. I'm just going to arrest them and interrogate them about the device. We still need to figure out where it is and how to de-activate it."

"Are you going to tackle them, at least?" Reid asked.

"What do you think?" Morgan asked back. "It's standard operating procedure. SSA Derek Morgan at your service."

"If only I could be there to see it," Reid said. "If only..." he stopped abruptly.

He suddenly realized the source of his good luck. He realized why the signal had been holding steady.

"Reid? Are you there? Can you hear me?" Morgan wondered if the network had dropped the call without the sickening "dun-dun".

"Um, Morgan? I can see the sky," Reid replied.

"From inside the T station?" Morgan asked.

"Yeeeeeeeah," Reid replied slowly. "I can see a sliver of gray cloudy sky from the subway platform, next to the northbound tracks. Actually, there's more than one sliver. There's another crack, and another over there..."

"Get out of there, Reid!" Morgan yelled. "Get out of there right now! That station's coming down!"

"Morgan? Oh..." Reid's little girl voice came through the phone.

A loud noise, like thunder with all crack and no boom, followed the little girl voice.

"Dun-dun!" the network dropped the call.

Derek Morgan closed his eyes and dropped his cell phone on the ground. He could not inhale, exhale, or swallow. He felt his body trapped in some kind of stasis field. He wanted to burrow into a hole and hide there until the crisis passed, which would happen as soon as the cult detonated the device. Six hours. A whole six hours. Only six hours left.

Downtown Crossing collapsed one city block to the southeast of Park Street. If Morgan moved a few feet to his left, he would be able to look down Winter Street to view a mountain of concrete and steel debris. That was where his buddy was trapped, but he refused to acknowledge the fact. He held onto the only thing he had, which was the "dun-dun" of the network dropping the call. There was a small chance that the network had not dropped the call randomly. The network might have dropped the call, because Reid had jumped into the northbound tunnel leading to Park Street. Perhaps he was running through the tunnel right now. Given the miniscule distance between Downtown Crossing and Park Street, it should only take a few minutes for Reid to get through the tunnel. As soon as the last bulldozer cleared away the last heap of rubble, Morgan would find Reid waiting at the bottom of the stairs. Reid would beg Morgan to let him come on the raid, and Morgan would concede, because Reid had earned it. Besides, he was not the Unit Chief, and it was not his job to leave anyone behind.

The last bulldozer cleared away the last heap of rubble. The last heap of rubble no longer propped up the unstable pavilion over the entrance of the T station. The pavilion collapsed onto the stairs below, and the stairs collapsed into the station itself. The hours of work at Park Street had been wasted. Morgan would not find Reid waiting at the bottom of the non-existent stairs. If Morgan ever saw his friend again, it would be as a dead broken body pulled out of the rubble. Morgan would not want to see it. The only thing he wanted to see was the cult. Wherever they were, he would find them and gather them up, and he would put their heads, one by one, on sticks for public display.

"Ring! Ring!" Morgan's cell phone wailed.

"Reid!"

"It's Hotch," said a deep serious voice. "We have returned from the Andromeda Galaxy. We have new information about the cult and the plot. We don't think it's a single hydrogen bomb. We think it's a pair of neutron bombs. The new data opens up a new option. Should we evacuate the city?"

"What?" was all that Morgan could muster.


	8. Chapter 8

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Author's Note: And so the Sci-Fi Channel Disaster Movie continues, and the science becomes increasingly made-up. But it sure was fun to make it up. :)

* * *

Chapter 8

Boston City Hall Situation Room  
October 16, 2010

"You've got to start from the beginning," Morgan barged into the empty Situation Room, "I can't even think straight right now."

"Hotch, Dave, and Emily are at a meeting with the higher-ups," JJ replied from the BAU screen. "They're discussing whether to evacuate the city. Lowly media liaisons and technical analysts are not invited."

"They can't evacuate the city," Morgan said. "Like I said on the phone, we only have six hours until the cult sets off the device. That's not enough time to evacuate the city. It'll be total chaos. People are going to die."

"Six hours?" JJ asked. "Hotch didn't mention anything about a six-hour timeline."

"Uh...that's the timeline," Morgan replied evasively, not wanting to inform JJ and Garcia about the latest disaster at Downtown Crossing. "You have to fill me in on how we got from one hydrogen bomb to two neutron bombs. It doesn't make any sense. A single hydrogen bomb would be far more destructive than any number of neutron bombs."

"We got it from the source himself," Garcia said, pointing to a photo of a skinny young man with a blank expression on his face. "James Robert Leonard, MBTA employee and CP1919 cult member. As a member of the MBTA, he works at the South Station feeder station. As a member of the CP1919 cult, he does all the dirty work for Charles Preston - buying contraband materials, infiltrating the subway system, building and planting the devices. As himself, he leaves anonymous tips for the FBI, but chickens out from meeting FBI agents at the last minute."

"This is the guy who left the anonymous tip?" Morgan asked angrily.

"Yes, we call him Jim-Bob, when Hotch isn't around," JJ answered. "27 years old, a native of Portland, Maine. Attended college at Northeastern, but dropped out in the middle of his junior year. Did a bunch of construction work before joining the MBTA in 2008. Appears to be very intelligent with a lot of technical knowledge, but lacks direction in life. Recruited to the cult by Charles Preston in 2009."

"You got all this from database searches?" Morgan asked Garcia.

"Yep!" Garcia answered brightly, "Database searches, cell phone records, emails written in code..."

"They emailed each other in code?" Morgan asked, "You were able to crack the code in the hour that I was gone?"

"Awwwwwww, you're even more adorable when you're impressed! My legions cracked the code!" Garcia air-molested her row of over-heating laptops. "We got critical information from the emails, but not as critical as we had hoped. Jim-Bob and Preston were careful to avoid mentioning the specifics of the plot, such as the locations of the devices, but they did mention the existence of two neutron bombs. They referred to them as Alpha and Beta, like alpha and beta stars in a constellation. Alpha is always the brightest star in a constellation, like Betelgeuse is alpha Orionis in Orion and Antares is alpha Scorpii in Scorpio. In Orion, the beta star..."

"Hold it!" Morgan put up his hand to halt the irrelevant astronomy lesson.

Since Reid's disappearance into the subway system, Morgan had noticed a disturbing phenomenon in the BAU. Everyone, including himself, had assumed some of Reid's fact-spewing tendencies. It was as if they were all trying to make up for Reid's absence. If it went any further, it would be as if Reid had cloned himself several times. The image of multiple Reids in the BAU made Morgan smile and shudder at the same time.

"Forgive me, Goddess of the Heavens, but we've got to get on with it," Morgan apologized to Garcia. The clock is ticking away," he checked his cell phone for signal and battery, as he did every thirty seconds.

"Aye, aye, O Captain, My Captain!" said Garcia.

"OK, reset," Morgan sighed. "First of all, how do we know that this Jim-Bob guy left the anonymous tip?"

"He left a second tip that mentioned the first tip," said JJ. "This time, he spent most of the recording blubbering about not wanting to die and not wanting to kill anyone. He was crying for the entire three minutes. He didn't mention anything about the devices, but he did mention something called a 'third rail' several times. Then, there was a bunch of static, and the recording ended."

"He's the one at South Station," Morgan realized. "He's the one sending current through the third rail."

"What do you mean?" Garcia asked.

"The cult is planning to detonate the devices using electrical discharges through the third rail on the subway track," Morgan replied. "It's complicated, but it'll take them at least six hours to ramp up enough voltage. That's our timeline."

"OK, good to know," said JJ. "I wonder why Hotch didn't tell us that."

"He probably forgot," Morgan made an excuse for Hotch, "He was probably too busy thinking about meeting the President or whoever the higher-ups are. Alright," he changed the subject, "If our information is reliable, which it is, because it comes from the Goddess," he gestured towards Garcia. "We know that there are two neutron bombs in the subway system. Neutron bombs are less destructive than hydrogen bombs. A neutron bomb wouldn't nuke an entire city the way a hydrogen bomb would. In a neutron bomb, the casing is lined with chromium or nickel instead of lead, so the high-energy neutrons escape the device as soon as they are created in the fusion reactions. Instead of driving the fission and fusion reactions inside the device, the neutrons wreak havoc on the outside world, penetrating buildings and vehicles, killing organisms through ionizing radiation. In a densely populated city, the sole purpose of a neutron bomb is not to destroy the infrastructure, but to kill the inhabitants."

"That's exactly how Dr. Bell explained it," Garcia said. "We call her LLS, short for Long Lost Sister, when Hotch isn't around. She and Reid have got to be twins separated at birth."

"And it fits in with the psychology of the UFO cult," JJ ignored the reference to LLS.

"Oh right...the UFO cult. How could I have forgotten those bastards? What do we know about UFO cults?" Morgan muttered to himself. "UFO cults have a wide range of bizarre beliefs, but they all have one thing in common..."

"They have absolutely no faith in humanity," JJ finished the thought. "That's why they look to the stars for something else to believe in. They make up stories about extraterrestrial civilizations. They believe that aliens are coming to supplant humans on Earth or that they themselves are going to leave Earth to join the aliens."

"Some of the cult leaders claim to have telepathic communications with aliens," Garcia said. "Others claim to be descendants of aliens. That automatically makes the cult leaders superior in the eyes of the cult members. Some cults believe that we are all descendants of aliens who visited Earth millions of years ago to seed the planet with intelligent life. Scientologists believe that every human has had many past lives, some of them as aliens in long-extinct multi-star-system civilizations. That's why we're all so damaged at birth...It's the trauma we've all accumulated over thousands of past lives," she darted her eyes back and forth behind her glasses, looking for trauma from her past lives.

"The only UFO cult I'm familiar with is Heaven's Gate," said Morgan. "That was the cult that committed mass suicide at a compound in San Diego back in 1997. The cult leader, Marshall Applewhite, convinced his followers that a spaceship was coming to pick them up. The spaceship was supposedly hidden behind Comet Hale-Bopp, which was at its brightest in the spring of 1997. The cult members believed that the Earth was going to be cleansed, and that death was the only way for them to shed to their human bodies and journey into a new extraterrestrial existence."

"The 'Next Level'..." Garcia said. "Yeah, I've always been interested in UFO cults," she answered a look from JJ.

"Cleansing," Morgan tested the word, "That's what CP1919 is doing with the neutron bombs, isn't it? Cleansing the city? Cleansing the city of its nasty human parasites?"

"Hotch thinks so," JJ replied. "Dave's still skeptical. He's hung up on why the cult members would choose to be around for the cleansing."

"Emily thinks that the cult has tested itself and found itself unworthy," Garcia said. "They, like the rest of us poor humans, are not good enough to join an enlightened extraterrrestrial civilization. That's why they're cleansing themselves away, along with everyone else in the city."

"Or maybe they just couldn't find enough fissile and fusile material to build a hydrogen bomb," JJ suggested. "Maybe they had to settle for smaller neutron bombs with the limited materials they acquired."

"Who knows? Who knows?" Morgan shied away from the UFO cult. "We can ask their Supreme Being, Xerqik or Ptirzalon or whatever it's called, when we find them. Right now, we've got two neutron bombs in the subway system...A pair of neutron bombs in the subway system," he mulled over the data out loud.

He had a nagging feeling that he was missing something crucial in the data. The data was there for him to see, but he was not making adequate sense of it. That was because he was Derek Morgan. Derek Morgan was supposed to be out there, running around in the subway tunnels, while Dr. Spencer Reid was supposed to be in here, putting together the pieces of the puzzle. The new world order was dystopian, and the city would suffer the consequences.

"Cleanse the city...Kill the inhabitants..." Morgan mulled further. "Neutron bombs cause limited blast and heat damage with a large casualty count. Ionizing radiation penetrates buildings, but it's most effective in open spaces with many people out and about on a Saturday afternoon. Open spaces...Open spaces!" he smacked himself on the forehead with his palm.

"Derek? Sweetie Pie, are you OK?" Garcia asked in concern.

"Open spaces!" Morgan announced loudly, "Open spaces in the middle of the city!" he pointed towards the Round Table Room.

"Boston Common is a large open space, as is the Government Center Complex where you are, which is directly across from a busy shopping and tourist area at Fanueil Hall," JJ consulted the map on the bulletin board.

"Park Street and Government Center!" Morgan declared. "That's where the bombs are! Those are the most logical locations to set off neutron bombs. If I wanted to set off neutron bombs, that's where I'd put them. Wouldn't you?" he asked the media liaison and technical analyst.

Morgan picked up his cell phone to call Hotch. He had uncovered the most critical piece of the puzzle. He knew that he was right, but he needed to hear someone concur with him. Hotch would agree with his theories and put a stop to the misguided evacuation.

In his eagerness to call Hotch, Morgan rejected the incoming call on his cell phone. It was a call from Reid, and Morgan exulted despite his uncooperative fingers. The extraterrestrials were smiling down upon him. Because of him, the city would survive, and as icing on the cake, Reid was alive as well.

* * *

Park Street T Station  
October 16, 2010

Reid sprinted into the Park Street T Station just in time to hear the stairs collapse onto the first level, one story above the Red Line tracks. He dashed up the stairs to the Green Line tracks, hoping that the collapse had modified the configuration of the rubble. He hoped to find a new hole somewhere, wide enough for one skinny human to squeeze through. At the same time, he realized that he didn't want to leave the subway system. He wouldn't leave even if the entrance were clear. He was edging closer to the crux of the problem, and the scientist in him couldn't bear to abandon an elegant solution hovering just out of reach.

The large pile of rubble simplified Reid's decision-making process. The rubble extended all the way from the entrance onto the northbound Green Line tracks. Park Street looked worse than Downtown Crossing had looked when it had collapsed, but the tunnel back to Government Center was still clear. Reid decided that Government Center was the way to go. If he were lucky, he might stumble upon another piece of data. He hungered for data, because he was confident that he would make sense of it.

Before he embarked on his journey, Reid did the stupidest thing that he would never live to regret. He sprinted down the stairs to the Red Line, jumped onto the northbound track, and touched the third rail.

Nothing.

The collapse at Downtown Crossing had damaged the third rail enough to cut off the current from South Station. Or perhaps the feeder station at South Station had malfunctioned. Or perhaps the cult members at South Station had changed their minds.

Occam's Razor waved from his battle station and pushed the latter alternatives off the table. Reid acknowledged the wizened warrior. Current through the Red Line indicated that the Red Line was crucial for the detonation. Lack of current through the Red Line indicated that the plot had encountered a hitch. Reid hoped that a heavy steel support beam had deformed or severed the third rail somewhere between Downtown Crossing and South Station. If there were one device, then there would be no current through the third rail to detonate it. The plot would be dead. If there were more than one device, then Reid would have to find all the other currents through all the other third rails and cut them off. He would have to kill the plot.

Reid entered the subway tunnel with a spring in his step. He swept his Maglite over the tracks without trepidation. At the halfway point of the journey, the Maglite gave out.

Darkness closed in on all sides, but Reid realized that he was not really afraid of the dark. He was only afraid of the near-dark. When it was almost but not completely dark, shadows danced on walls and ghouls lurked in corners. When it was completely dark, nothing danced or lurked, and the only thing that bothered Reid was his own blindness. His eyes willed themselves to see, but no matter how far he opened them, they would not see. It was worse to have eyes that one could not use than to have no eyes at all.

Over time, the mind would accept its lack of vision. Vision was purely physical, untainted by imagination. Despite the complete absence of light, the driver willed its vehicle forwards.

"Move," the driver whispered in the darkness, "Move ahead. Slowly, slowly, slowly..."

The vehicle inched forward, eyes unblinking, arms at its sides, feet shying away from a third rail that was not there.

"There's no third rail on this section of the track," the driver remembered, "There's no third rail here."

The vehicle relaxed and strode forward a few more inches. A few more inches turned into a few more feet. Slowly and steadily, along a slightly wandering path, the vehicle chugged towards its destination.

"There's no third rail here, because the trains are powered by overhead lines," the driver recalled. "Many sections of the Green Line are powered by overhead lines instead of the third rail. Some of the sections switched to the third rail later, because overhead lines were considered unattractive in gentrified neighborhoods."

"Like the third rail, overhead lines deliver current to the train. The current drives the motor. The system operates using an electrical circuit between the feeder station and the train. In order to complete the circuit, the train sends current back to the feeder station through the running rails. Feeder station, third rail or overhead lines, train, running rails, feeder station - the path of the current through the circuit."

"Complete the circuit...Complete the circuit..." the driver pondered.

The vehicle hurtled ever faster through the tunnel as the driver slotted the gears into place.

"Disrupt the circuit...Disrupt the circuit..." the driver pondered.

The vehicle hurtled so fast through the tunnel that it sped right past the dark subway platform of the Government Center T Station. A few minutes beyond the subway platform, on the northbound track to Haymarket, the vehicle crashed into a large solid object. The vehicle bounced off the object, flying and landing backwards upon the ties. The vehicle coughed as it tried to fill its bellows with air, but the driver ignored the distant physical sensations. Once again, the clumsy unreliable vehicle had provided data, and once again, the driver had made sense of it.

The vehicle had crashed into another vehicle. The other vehicle was a Green Line train parked on the tracks between Government Center and Haymarket. The train was the raison d'etre for the electrical circuit. Its job was to suck up current to power itself through the tunnels.

Unlike the section between Government Center and Park Street, the section between Government Center and Haymarket carried a third rail. The third rail carried a limited supply of current, which the train sucked up at will. If the train sucked up enough current for itself, then there would not be enough current for other operations.

Somewhere on this section of the Green Line, a thin gold wire lived in the detonator of a nuclear weapon. The gold wire waited to be vaporized by a fast pulse of high-voltage current. The vaporization would generate a shock wave that would set off a chemical explosive and trigger the fission reactions needed to trigger the fusion reactions. As long as there was no pulse, no vaporization, and no shock wave, the fissile and fusile materials were free to decay with their natural half-lives. The half-life of uranium-235 was 700 million years.

In the hands of a capable conductor, the train would save the city.

* * *

Government Center T Station  
October 16, 2010

"Morgan! I need an MBTA engineer!" Reid yelled through the static on the cell phone. "I need to figure out how to operate a Green Line train!"

"Pete!" Reid heard Morgan summon someone.

"Yeah...uh...Dr. Reid? This is Pete...I'm an engineer with the MBTA," a new voice stuttered through the static.

"The third rail between Government Center and Haymarket is on," Reid said. "There's a train parked on the northbound Green Line track. You need to tell me how to operate the train. I'm going to use the train to divert current from the detonator."

"Detonators, Reid!" Morgan shouted into the phone. "Two detonators in two devices - one at Park Street, one at Government Center."

"The third rail on the Red Line is off," Reid informed Morgan.

"You touched the third rail again?" Morgan asked in shock.

"Yes, I'm used to it now," Reid replied matter-of-factly. "I did it on purpose this time. I touched the third rail on the Green Line too. Not with my hand, with a Twinkie. It's definitely on. Where's the feeder station for the Green Line?"

"North Station," Pete answered. "The third rail on that section of track is controlled by the feeder station at North Station, one stop north of Haymarket."

"We've already got Counterterrorism and the Field Office assembling a team to raid North Station," Morgan shouted from a distance. "The feeder station is farther away from the subway tunnels there. The cult didn't bother to blow up the tunnels, because that wouldn't have helped them cut themselves off. It would only have attracted unwanted attention to North Station. They had to make compromises too!"

"Agent Morgan? We're ready for you," came the sound of a female voice in the background.

"Got it, Mac!" Morgan replied. "Pete, you stay here and tell Reid everything he needs to know about the train. I'm going to be in the Situation Room until it's time to leave. Then, I'm going to pay those faux aliens a little visit."

"Hey Morgan!" Reid's little girl voice appeared.

"What, Reid, what?" Morgan feared the little girl voice. Every time it appeared, something horrible was happening, had happened, or was about to happen.

"See you when you get back!" Reid said confidently.

"You got it, Pretty Boy!" Morgan laughed.

The sound of laughter faded away as Morgan joined the other agents in the Situation Room. Reid turned his attention back to the train.

"Pete, you need to tell me how to operate this train," Reid said. "Starting with how to get in. What's the code for the door?"

"Uh...That's the 3389 train, so the code is 7721," Pete replied.

"That's a real high-security system you've got there," Reid remarked. "Once I get in the door, how do I turn on the train?"

"Why don't you punch in the code right now, and I'll walk you through it step-by-step?" Pete suggested.

"I can't," Reid replied through the static, "There's no signal on the track."

"Sorry, I forgot about that. Alright, I'll tell you everything step-by-step, and you'll have to try to remember it all," Pete said.

"Sure," Reid smirked a little, "I'll try to remember it all."

He prepared his imperfect auditory channel to receive information from the engineer. He prepared his visual cortex to translate words into pictures. As long as he translated everything - both the words themselves and the entities they described - into pictures, he would not be able to forget a thing.

"OK, once you get in the door, you should see a dashboard full of square buttons," Pete said. "The large green button on the far right side is the one that turns on the train. Once you turn on the train, the buttons should all light up. If the buttons don't light up, then you're not getting enough current to power the train."

"What if I can't get enough current?" Reid asked. "The third rail hasn't ramped up to 600 volts yet. That's why I'm alive to talk to you. Is there a backup generator onboard the train?"

"No," Pete replied, "There's no backup system onboard. That's why the trains sometimes get stuck on the tracks during normal operations. Whenever a train loses power, it has to be pushed through the tunnel by a second train coming in behind it."

"So I'm stuck if there's not enough current?" Reid asked unhappily.

"You can wait for the feeder station to ramp up to 600 volts," said Pete.

"Are you sure there's no other way?" Reid asked. "I don't want to wait for the feeder station to ramp up. The feeder station is controlled by a cult. We can't take the risk. I don't know exactly how many volts the cult needs to set off the device. 1,200 is the maximum capacity for the third rail, but the cult might not need that much voltage to detonate the device."

"Wait!" Pete yelled excitedly, "There is another way! It's an experimental energy-harvesting system that we're testing for the Department of Defense. They funded some of our new trains, so we're testing a large-scale piezoelectric energy-harvesting system onboard. The purpose is to collect energy created by passengers moving about on the train. It would provide a backup system for the train without having to carry around an onboard generator."

"Piezoelectric materials on the train!" Reid exclaimed, equally excited. "Fascinating...piezoelectric materials that generate current upon mechanical deformation..."

"Yes! Under the floor of the train, there are bars of lead zirconate titanate, PZT, a piezoelectric ceramic that generates current when it's mechanically deformed by 0.1% of its depth," said Pete. "All you have to do is jump up and down on the floor between the facing entrance ramps. It should only take a few minutes to get the instrument panel powered up. I know! I've tried it before!"

"And then? And then?" Reid shifted restlessly on a pile of rubble near the station entrance.

"Once the buttons start working, you can drive the train a short distance into the Government Center T Station. At that point, the train will connect with the overhead lines that power it between Government Center and Arlington. In the meantime, I'll radio the guys at Arlington to turn on the overhead lines. When you get the train up and running, we can all communicate through the radio. You can shuttle the train back and forth between Bolyston and Haymarket, as far as it'll go until it runs into rubble on the track. You can build up speed in the overhead sections, then suck all the current out of the third rail on the section between Government Center and Haymarket."

"Perfect!" Reid couldn't wait to get on the train. "Anything else? Anything else I need to know?"

"No one's supposed to know this," Pete whispered, "So don't tell any of my superiors. The train can get up to 120 mph. At that speed, it should suck up the majority of the capacity from the third rail. I know! I've tried that too!"

"Thanks, Pete! Good to know! And I thought that 108 mph was the record speed for a train in a third rail system," Reid was unable to restrain himself from reciting a factoid.

"The official records don't mean a thing," Pete replied. "We engineers like to have some fun with our babies, especially if they come from Uncle Sam..."

"I like the way you think, Pete," said Reid. "Alright, I'm going to get the train up and running, and I'll try the radio as soon as that happens."

"Great!" Pete replied, "I'll be waiting for your signal. And then..."

"Dun-dun!" the network dropped the call.

This time, Reid couldn't care less about the network. He was pre-occupied with the train. He was eager to get the train up and running. It was so easy. It was almost too easy. All he had to do was jump up and down, over and over again, above one spot on the floor. Reid was not good at sports, but even he could do that.


	9. Chapter 9

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.

* * *

Chapter 9

Green Line  
October 16, 2010

The Green Line train hurtled towards Park Street at 80 mph. Chihuahua-sized rats skittered away from the advancing locomotive. Stray pieces of rubble flitted into the gutters on either side of the track.

The train hurtled southwards on the northbound track. Just beyond Park Street, the train reversed direction and hurtled northwards. It reached 90 mph in the section between Park Street and Government Center. Just beyond Government Center, the train detached its pantographs from the overhead lines and attached its shoes to the third rail. Having built up enough speed in the overhead section, it hurtled over the third rail at 100 mph.

The train sucked up current from the third rail. The current powered the motor. The motor drove the train recklessly over the running rails. The running rails sent current back to the feeder station. The feeder station sent current through the third rail. The train sucked up current from the third rail.

The driver sat in his cramped compartment, focusing each sense upon the task before it. He fixed his eyes upon the tunnel and the track, maneuvering through every turn of the path. He fixed his ears upon the satisfying whooshing sound that accompanied the train through the tunnel. He smelled and tasted the rushing air that blew through the open window. The air smelled and tasted like a cold fall morning. The driver supposed that he had conferred odors and tastes to air which had neither.

Most of all, the driver engaged his sense of touch. His fingers pressed down upon the plastic buttons until the fingernails turned white and the knuckles turned sore. Whenever the train encountered the piles of rubble near Bolyston and Haymarket, the right middle finger slammed into the button that controlled the direction of the train. As soon as the train jolted into the opposite direction, the left middle finger slammed into the button that increased the speed of the train. The driver paid no attention to the fingers. He was drunk upon the power of the train. He was intoxicated upon his own power. His plan was working, and the only thing missing was a throttle for his hands to clutch.

* * *

North Station T Station  
October 16, 2010

"No one goes in except for me," Morgan warned the Counterterrorism and Field Office agents.

"We get it, Agent Morgan," said Agent Claire McDunkin from Counterterrorism. "You're the profiler. You're the one who understands UFO cults. You're the one who can talk them down. The rest of us are inanimate pieces of meat that can only bow down before the eye-blistering brilliance of the Behavioral Analysis Unit."

"Uh...That's not exactly what I meant, Mac," Morgan argued.

"I'm kidding," Mac smiled, "Comic relief, Agent Morgan. It's my area of expertise on the WMD/DT."

"We'll be backing you up outside," Agent Laurentis said seriously. "We'll be ready to go in at the slightest sign of trouble. We've already cut off all escape routes from the feeder station. We have snipers around the perimeter."

"Don't be too trigger-happy," Morgan warned again. "Our first priority is cutting off the detonator, not picking off the cult members one by one, as tempting as that would be."

"Of course," Agent Laurentis replied. "What exactly is your plan of action? What exactly does your profile tell you to do?"

"In this case, our profile doesn't tell us all that much," Morgan admitted. "I know a little bit about cult dynamics and UFO religions, but I'm basically winging it. I'll know a lot more once I observe the behaviors of the cult members. I'll be able to tell how deluded and fanatical they are. That'll lead me to the best method to talk them out of their plot. I know, Mac...So much for the eye-blistering brilliance of the Behavioral Analysis Unit..."

"Don't worry, Agent Morgan, I won't hold it against you," Mac teased a little. "Your job is far too important for me to make fun of you today. I'd love to be there to see you face off against those wackos, but I'll settle for listening in instead. We'll see you when you get back," she sent him off.

"Yeah, see you when I get back," Morgan replied, feeling more confident than he had any right to feel. "Tell Reid to keep driving that train. Tell him to keep doing it until I rip apart those little bastards. That's Plan B. Plan A starts right now," he turned towards the feeder station.

He walked slowly towards the shabby brick building. The building had no windows on the side facing him, so the cult members would not see his approach. Out of habit, he drew his weapon and pointed the barrel at the featureless brick wall.

At a faded peeling door, Morgan knocked loudly, several times in succession. He paused, waiting for a response from inside the building. Everything was silent, except for the light buzz of Saturday morning traffic on a nearby bridge.

"FBI!" Morgan knocked again. "We're here to speak to the CP1919 cult. We're only here to talk. Please open up!"

Nothing. Morgan wished that he could discern a shred of activity through the non-existent windows.

"I'm putting away my weapon," Morgan holstered his gun, doing exactly the thing that he had repeatedly counseled Reid never to do. "I'm only here to talk. I'm interested in your group."

Still nothing. Morgan wished that he could bore through the red brick wall with his non-existent X-ray vision.

"I'm alone out here," Morgan knocked a third time. "I'd like to learn more about your beliefs and activities. Please open..."

The door opened before Morgan could complete his request. A young blonde woman peered cautiously at him. She stuck her head out the door and looked in all directions in the North Station complex. Satisfied that Morgan was alone, she opened the door to reveal a handful of figures sitting at computer screens all around the room. The figures hunched over their screens in the darkness, but their eyes shifted into Morgan's direction. A tall lean middle-aged man stepped forward to introduce himself.

"Please come in," he said, waving Morgan into the room. "My name is Charles Preston. We welcome anyone who wishes to learn more about our beliefs and activities."

"SSA Derek Morgan, FBI," Morgan stepped in.

The door closed and locked behind him, and Morgan licked his lips nervously. He wondered how Reid was doing with the train. In Morgan's eyes, the image of Reid driving a train was absolutely ridiculous. Its ridiculousness bordered on hilarity, but in truth, Morgan was jealous of Reid. Morgan wanted to be the one driving the train. Driving the train would give him control of the situation. Driving the train would get him out of a confrontation with the charismatic leader of a UFO cult. It was not the confrontation itself that bothered him, but his lack of control during it. At the same time, he realized that desiring control over all situations was the hallmark of many an UnSub. He felt like an UnSub, and as soon as he did so, he felt that he had gained greater control over the situation.

Morgan remembered that he possessed the one thing that most UnSubs lacked. He possessed empathy. In the end, all human interactions boiled down to empathy. Either one had it and could offer it to oneself and others, or one didn't have it and could not offer it to anyone.

Morgan would offer empathy to the cult members. Empathy was hard to offer oneself, but easy to offer others. It was all about hearing and seeing and understanding - making use of the senses and making use of the brain. It boiled down to the infuriating statement, "It is what it is." It was not about solving problems - not the problems of humans and not the problems of humanity. The giving and receiving of it reinforced the bonds between humans and humanity. Where faith had been lost, it could be restored again. Where faith had been diverted, it could be focused again.

Perhaps faith was a zero sum game. Morgan didn't believe that, but in this situation, he was eager to play the game. Every particle of faith gained by Derek Morgan was a particle of faith lost by Charles Preston. Plan A would work, but even if it didn't, Plan B was already in action. There was still Reid, driving a train up and down the Green Line track, diverting current from the detonator. In battle, a double-pronged approach was best.

* * *

Government Center T Station  
October 16, 2010

Reid fumbled for the radio button on the dashboard.

"Hello? Pete? Mike? The train is stuck!" he spoke into the radio.

No answer.

"The train is stuck!" he repeated.

No answer.

"Dr. Reid! What's going on? We can see that you've stopped moving. Are you stuck?" came Pete's voice through the radio.

The voice jolted Reid out of his panicked confusion. He realized that he had been speaking into the intercom instead of the radio. He had pressed the wrong button on the dashboard.

"Yeah, Pete! The train is stuck! The instrument panel is on, but the train isn't getting enough current to move. Is there something wrong with the overhead lines?"

"Mike! What's wrong the overhead lines?" Reid heard Pete yell across the control room at the Arlington feeder station.

"Damn it! Not now!" came the frustrated answer. "It's this new software that we installed over the summer. It freezes whenever the current through the running rails reaches a certain level. When the current through the running rails is too high, the software won't let us send current through the overhead lines."

"Can't you override the goddamned software?" Reid heard Pete's annoyed voice.

"No, this piece-of-shit won't let us override anything," said Mike. "We have to restart the system. It'll take an hour to get the overhead lines back up to full capacity."

"An hour?" Reid and Pete screeched in unison.

"You're telling me that this happens all the time? That you're constantly having to restart the system due to software glitches? Why didn't anyone ever submit an error report?" Pete asked Mike.

"It doesn't happen all the time!" Mike defended the feeder station. "It's only happened once before. We wouldn't even be aware of the problem if it hadn't happened that one time, when those doofuses at North Station put too many trains through and screwed up both the third rail and the overhead lines. The whole Green Line was clogged up for hours. That one time..."

"I don't care about that one time!" Pete snapped, "What do we do about it now?"

"Why isn't the software shutting down the third rail? Can't we use the software to shut down the third rail too?" Reid leaped to the root of the issue.

"The third rail is controlled by a different software module," Mike replied. "When the software detects too much current through the running rails, it prevents additional current from being sent through the third rail, but it doesn't shut down the third rail entirely."

"How high is the voltage?" Reid asked Pete.

"We're up to 625 volts," Pete answered, "We're already past our standard operating capacity."

"Alright, let me think for a second," Reid muttered over the radio. "So far, we've slowed the process by two hours. It should've taken the cult half-an-hour to ramp up to 600 volts, but it's taken them two-and-a-half hours instead. What's the latest from the raid team at North Station? Have they located the cult yet?"

"Last I heard, Agent Morgan was getting ready to make contact," Pete replied. "They haven't updated me in the past thirty minutes. No one answers the phone when I call them. The other agents aren't as forthcoming as Agent Morgan."

"Hopefully, Morgan's negotiating with the cult right now," Reid said. "Hopefully, he'll be able to talk them down. He'll figure out a way to talk them down when he sees them."

"Because he's going to psychoanalyze them?" Pete asked.

"Yes, he's going to observes their behaviors and interactions," Reid replied. "He's going to find their vulnerable spots and rip them apart from there. Our problem is the third rail. If we're not on it, we can't suck up current from it."

"The software!" Pete said.

"Yes, the software!" Reid echoed back. "What if we re-write a portion of the software, just the module that controls the third rail? Can we shut down the third rail that way? I bet Garcia could hack into the system and screw it up pretty badly. But I don't want her hacking haphazardly. That's too unpredictable. I swear that software sometimes exhibits sentient behaviors. What's the safest, most predictable way to modify the behavior of the third rail?"

"The third rail is controlled by the core of the program," Mike replied. "It would take forever to re-write the core, but it might be possible to re-write the module that detects current through the running rails. If we can screw up that module..."

"If we can get the software to detect any current through the running rails as too much current, then it'll screw up the third rail, just like it's screwed up the overhead lines," Pete suggested in excitement.

"Yes! We can take an indirect approach to the problem. Instead of sucking up current from the third rail, we can inhibit its function some other way. It'll be like disrupting a feedback mechanism to inhibit a signal transduction cascade!" Reid pulled useless biological analogies out of his overflowing knowledge stores.

"Huh?" Pete the Engineer asked.

"Call the Situation Room," Reid ordered Pete. "Tell them to put you through to Technical Analyst Penelope Garcia at the BAU. She'll be able to re-write and re-compile that software module in no time. She'll be able to do deploy it even if she has to release a virus into the MBTA computer system."

"Alright, I'll get right on it!" Pete replied. "I'll get back to you when the software is ready to go."

"Great!" Reid declared. "I'll wait for your signal before I start jumping up and down over the floor. The PZT under the floor should generate detectable current through the running rails. That's how we powered up the train in the first place."

"Back when we powered up the train, we were connected to the third rail, which was sending current through," Pete thought back. "It wasn't the PZT alone that powered up the train. The PZT and the third rail powered up the train together. This time, all we have is PZT. With the resistance through the running rails..." he calculated ominously.

"With the resistance through the running rails?" Reid asked.

"The PZT will generate a limited amount of current. It's not even a proven backup system. It's a cutting-edge experimental system. Some of that current will be lost to resistance through the running rails. The sensors will detect a residual current, but the software may interpret the signal as noise."

"So we'll need to generate a lot of current," Reid said. "We'll need to generate enough current for the software to detect signal instead of noise."

"You might be jumping up and down for a very long time," Pete said sympathetically.

"It's OK, Pete," Reid brushed off his concern. "It's just jumping up and down. There's a snack stand right outside the train. I'm going to break into it and get something to eat. I'll talk to you when I get back."

"Got it, Doc," Pete replied. "I don't know what's going to happen today, but I've got only one thing to say."

"What is it?" Reid asked anxiously.

"It's been a pleasure working with you, Dr. Reid."

* * *

Next up: Reid's life sucks a lot, and Morgan rips the cult a new one. :)


	10. Chapter 10

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.

* * *

Chapter 10

Government Center T Station  
October 16, 2010

Before commencing his Physical Education class, Reid consumed three hot dogs, four Twinkies, and a bottle of blue Gatorade. He tried not to doze off as he waited for Pete radio him back about the software. The wait gave him a chance to digest the junk food. He had been hungry enough to eat more, but he didn't want all that food jiggling around in his stomach while he jumped up and down over the floor.

"We're ready for you," Pete said through the radio.

"Alright, I'll be starting in a minute," Reid rolled out of the driver's seat, yawning and blinking. "If you need to talk to me, just yell through the radio. I've got it set to receive, so I won't be talking back. The door between the driver's compartment and the passenger car is open. I'll be able to hear you if you yell."

"Got it," Pete answered. "Uh...Sorry about all this. I really am sorry. We wouldn't ask you to do this if we had any other choice. The software requires reports from localized sensors on the running rails. Thank God the ones near Government Center are still working. I'm sorry, Doc...Our subway system is the oldest in the country, and we've always been slow to upgrade..."

"Except when upgrading reliable software into spastic pieces-of-shit," Mike contributed from a distant corner of a distant room.

"Don't worry about it, Pete," Reid reassured the engineer. "I'm sure I'll survive a little exercise. Exercise is good for you, isn't it? Or so I've been told. Plus, I have all kinds of snacks ready to go...Twinkies, Ho-Ho's, Pringles, Gatorade..." he ticked off his snack collection as he exited the driver's compartment.

In the passenger car, Reid positioned his feet over the floor between the entrance ramps. He tested the floor with a small hop. It was one thing to jump up and down for a few minutes to power up the dashboard. It was quite another to jump up and down indefinitely to stop a UFO cult from activating the nuclear button.

Reid felt silly jumping up and down, like a five-year-old in the midst of a temper tantrum. The vision amused him. He imagined himself as an angry five-year-old on a mission. His mission was to jump up and down in frenzied fury until his parents let him have Twinkies and Ho-Ho's for dinner. The fully realized mission sent a wave of energy surging through him. It was the boundless energy of the child, and Reid plucked it out of the air before it could bounce away. Despite his exhaustion, it gave him the strength to begin. Someone like Reid, who had never quite let go of the child, was perfectly positioned to use it.

"Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!" Reid jumped over the floor.

"I'm tired," the body declared.

"Shut up," the mind replied.

"OK," the body muttered.

"Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!" Reid jumped some more.

"Nothing yet!" Pete yelled through the radio, "We're up to 800 volts on the third rail!"

Reid didn't reply. He couldn't reply. The radio button was located on the dashboard in the driver's compartment, and he couldn't abandon his battle station in the passenger car. He resisted the temptation to stop jumping.

"Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!"

"Still nothing!" Pete yelled, "825 volts!"

Reid didn't reply. He couldn't reply. He was too out-of-breath to say anything. He started sweating. Drops of perspiration rolled down his forehead into his eyes. Reid launched a preemptive strike. Before the sweating became profuse, he removed his button-down shirt and threw it across the car. He intended the shirt to land on a row of seats near the door. It landed on the filthy floor instead.

"I want to stop," the body announced.

"No," the mind replied.

"Fine," the body grumbled.

"Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!"

After awhile, sweating was no longer an issue. Reid sweated profusely, but he let the sweat roll down his skin, according to the laws of gravity, until his skin was wholly drenched in sweat. Sweating became the New Normal. Overheating became the New Issue.

In the warm subway tunnel, on a stationary train, air did not circulate, and sweat did not blow away. There was no breeze through the window and no power for air-conditioning. Reid had no choice but to remove his pants. Overheating always started in the legs. Legs were full of skeletal muscle, and skeletal muscle generated a lot of heat as it churned. Legs were not adequate heat exchangers. The skin of legs did not carry a sufficient number of sweat glands to cool off the muscles within. The muscles burned like a furnace. They were as hot as the boiler room of the Titanic before the doomed ship sank into the icy Atlantic.

Reid kicked off his shoes. He unbuckled his belt and let his pants drop to the floor. He hopped out of them while hopping over the floor in a Pavlovian daze. Using his left arm, he threw his pants across the car to join his shirt on the filthy floor. This time, he hit his mark. He discovered that while he had always written with his right hand, he was a southpaw when he threw. No wonder he had always been so bad at baseball. As a child, his father had coached him in Little League, and he had always been the most inept player on the team, both as a pitcher and as a hitter. Now, he realized that he had simply been using the wrong side of his body. Perhaps he could have been a good player if he had used his left side instead. Everything might have been different if he had used his left side.

"Who am I kidding?" Reid snapped back to reality.

He stopped jumping and sat himself upon the floor. It took him thirty seconds to slip his shoes over his feet and a full minute to tie the shoelaces in his shaking fingers. In total, Reid stopped jumping for ninety seconds. Even with a thumping heart, burning lungs, and seizing muscles to accompany them, those ninety seconds were pure bliss.

"We got something!" Pete yelled, "We're stuck at 850 volts! The meter hasn't budged in several minutes. Keep going, Dr. Reid!"

"Yeah, Doc!" Mike shouted. "Keep going! You're doing it! Those cult freaks can take their third rail and shove it up their asses!"

"Thank you," the mind telepathed towards the radio, "Thank you for your encouragement."

"Don't stop," the body concurred.

At this stage, sweating and overheating were both part of the New Normal. Breathing was the New Issue. Reid knew that he was not in shape for prolonged periods of cardiovascular exercise. In a society in which 60% of the members were overweight, skinniness was often mistaken for fitness. In this case, the correlation was false. Reid had always been skinny, but he had never been fit.

As he breathed, a burning sensation spread from his lungs into his sinuses. His lungs longed for air, but each breath of air carried a cost. The cost was pain. Air scraped against the nasal passages on its way into the windpipe. Air forced its way through the windpipe, squeezing the passage open and shut, alternating between exploding and imploding states of discomfort. The lungs, which one did not sense until there was something wrong with them, clutched at the air, but regretted their hunger as soon as the air inflated them. The lungs screamed for air, knowing full well that air carried with it a special brand of burning agony. Burning in the lungs synchronized with burning in the muscles. Eventually, mercy prevailed. Numbness creeped in to replace burning. Reid felt his legs from a distance, as pieces of wood vaguely attached to his body. Numb pieces of wood did not hit the floor with the same force as fresh limbs. They failed to generate the requisite amount of current.

"Damn it!" Pete's voice came through the radio. "Why is the voltage going up again? We're up to 900 volts all of a sudden! Dr. Reid? Are you OK?"

"Keep going, Doc!" Mike shouted. "Please keep going!" his voice took on a tone of desperation. "Damn these overhead lines! They're not charging up fast enough!"

"Don't let it get to 1,000...Don't let it get to 1,000..." Reid could hear Pete even as Pete muttered to himself.

The voices prompted Reid to jump harder. Movement was the only thing that mattered. Movement was life. More than anything, Reid wanted to stop, but stopping carried a cost as well. The cost was death. Reid considered himself lucky. His state of living or dying was under his own control. When it came time for death, self-inflicted torture was not the worst way to go.

"925...We're stable at 925 volts," Pete reported.

Reid nodded involuntarily. He tried to smile, but found that smiling diverted too much energy from jumping. He patted himself on the back in a mental gesture. He had hit the wall, but he had survived the impact. He had survived long enough for the endorphins to kick in. Endorphins appeared when the body had used up all its energy reserves. Their job was to push the body past its physical limits, regardless of the consequences. Under the influence of endorphins, the mind exulted in the movement of the body. Thought processes became simple. Voices in the mind became monosyllabic. There was not enough energy for complexity.

"Move, move, move..." the mind repeated, "Move, move, move..."

Reid's heartrate reached 200 beats per minute. That was beyond the healthy threshold for a 29-year-old man. It didn't matter. For the moment, the high was firmly in charge. The high held back the current. The situation was ridiculous. One man's workout high protected a teeming metropolis. Unfortunately, as all junkies knew, highs never lasted.

At 212 beats per minute, the high gave out. Reid felt himself failing. He felt failure from a distance. His mind screamed that it was not so, but his body had its limits. He felt increasingly dizzy and nauseous.

"I have to stop," the body said.

"Stop...No, don't stop..." the mind waffled.

"Sorry," the body murmured.

At 222 beats per minute, the body crumpled to the floor. It waited for the onset of sudden cardiac death. It watched its heartbeat through its skin. On skinny people, heartbeats were often visible on the surface of the chest. It was never a pretty sight, not at 60 bpm and certainly not at 222 bpm.

Reid wondered if his brainbeats were visible on the surface of his forehead. His brain was beating almost as fast as his heart. It threatened to pound its way out of his skull. Even so, he was still a super-genius with an IQ of 187. His mind still functioned.

"Have a snack," the mind reminded the body, "And a drink. During strenuous exercise, hydration is key..."

"Good idea," the body agreed.

Reid reached towards a pile of snacks on a seat, grabbing a random bounty of Little Debbie and a random bottle of artificially-colored liquid. Lying down, less bile crawled its way up his throat, so he felt much less nauseous. He enjoyed a little snack while staring at the spinning ceiling. He had either reached a new low or a new high. It cost too much energy to distinguish between the two.

"Dr. Reid?" Pete yelled desperately. "Are you OK? We're up to 950 volts!"

"Dr. Reid!" Mike yelled with him. "Please don't give up! You have to keep going! You're the only thing standing in the way of those cult freaks. No one has heard from Agent Morgan since he disappeared into the feeder station. The overhead lines aren't working. You're the only thing we have!"

"Please stop talking," Reid telepathed through a chocolatey mouthful of Ho-Ho's. "Of course I'm OK. I just need to take a little breather. Two more minutes...Two more minutes is all I need. No one ever died from exercise. No one except Pheidippides, the first runner of the marathon...He dropped dead right after delivering his message to Athens. Sometimes, young people die from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy during exercise. That's a congenital defect of the heart...I'm sure I don't have that...I hope I don't have that..."

The complex train of thought energized Reid. Multisyllabic thoughts indicated that the body was recovering. It was ready for another round.

True to his word, Reid got up after two more minutes. He could still see his heartbeat through his skin, but the amplitude was not much higher than usual. The exploding feeling was gone, as was the pounding of the brain. He still wanted to throw up, but not everything could be perfect.

The mission was not over. The five-year-old had not finished showing who was boss. Mommy and Daddy had allowed him Ho-Ho's for dinner, but he wanted Twinkies too.

Reid started jumping up and down over the floor again. After ninety minutes of continuous operation and a five-minute break, Plan B swung back into action. The burden had not fallen entirely upon Plan A.

* * *

North Station T Station  
October 16, 2010

Morgan sensed something wrong the minute he heard voices through the radio in the feeder station.

"Damn it!" Pete's voice came through the radio. "Why is the voltage going up again? We're up to 900 volts all of a sudden! Dr. Reid? Are you OK?"

"Keep going, Doc!" Mike shouted. "Please keep going!" his voice took on a tone of desperation. "Damn these overhead lines! They're not charging up fast enough!"

"Don't let it get to 1,000...Don't let it get to 1,000..." Morgan could hear Pete even as he muttered to himself.

The voices carried confusion and fear. The words did not match up with Reid driving a train on the third rail, diverting current from the detonator.

"Why wouldn't Reid be OK?" Morgan wondered. "Why doesn't he radio back? Why does everyone sound so desperate?"

Occam's Razor drew the obvious conclusion. Something had gone wrong with Plan B. The burden had fallen entirely upon Plan A.

Plan A had gone wrong as well. Plan A had not believed that Plan B would fail. If it had, then it would never have veered onto its present course. It would have taken a more aggressive course, and it would not have been alone. It would have turned the drab little room into a bloodbath of cult members. Now, the opportunity was lost, and both plans were trapped in the worst of both worlds. Plan B was failing, had failed, or was about to fail, and Plan A followed a course that depended upon the success of Plan B. In battle, a double-pronged approach was best, but only as long as the prongs were not hopelessly intertwined.

Morgan sighed inaudibly and decided to get on with it. It was what it was.

"I'd like to learn more about your beliefs," Morgan faced Charles Preston.

"Really?" Preston raised his thick brown eyebrows, "Wouldn't you rather have us stop?"

"Would you stop if I asked?" Morgan asked.

"Of course not," Preston replied. "We're almost up to 1,000 volts. The detonator goes off at 1,000 volts. We like nice round numbers."

"You've got another 100 volts to go," Morgan pointed out the obvious. "In the meantime, why don't you tell me more about your organization?"

"Vicki?" Preston turned towards the young blonde woman who had opened the door.

"Our organization is none of your business," Vicki said. "We're not interested in sharing our beliefs, and we're not interested in recruiting new members. That would be pointless at this stage," she snickered.

"Then why did you let me in?" Morgan asked.

"We wanted to see the look on your face when the bombs went off," Vicki replied.

"The bomb," Morgan countered.

"The bombs," Preston corrected him, "Alpha and Beta, at Park Street and Government Center."

"Which is which?" Morgan asked.

"Alpha is the one at Park Street," Preston replied, "Beta is the one we're detonating from here."

"Alpha is dead," Morgan said emotionlessly. "It's been dead for awhile. Your friend, James, over-indulged in conventional explosives on the Red Line. The explosions took out the third rail near Downtown Crossing."

At the unexpected news, Preston flinched, Vicki stared, and four other heads perked up from computer screens all around the room. Morgan coughed to cover up a smirk.

"James left multiple anonymous tips for the FBI," he continued. "I guess he was having second thoughts, or attacks of conscience, or an existential crisis. I wouldn't know...I'm not good at reading people that I've never met. You know him much better than I do."

"He wouldn't!" Preston looked to Vicki.

"He would," Vicki replied grimly. "I should never have let him out of my sight. I should've gone with him to South Station. I thought of him as a technical genius, not as a fragile inexperienced little kid," she referred to a man not much younger than herself.

"Yeah," Morgan agreed, "You should've slapped a leash on him while you had the chance. People like James Robert Leonard are really the scum of the Earth. You think you know him. You think you trust him. He does everything right until you hand him an important job. Then, he turns around and screws you over. He's single-handedly screwed up the whole plan. If it hadn't been for him, there wouldn't have been any FBI agents in the subway system, screwing around with the third rail. You would've been able to detonate your devices by now."

"FBI agents?" Preston turned to Vicki, "There's more than one of them? I thought there was only one guy jumping up and down on that Green Line train. We only heard one guy talking through the radio."

"Believe it or not, that idiot is still doing it," a frustrated voice reported from the far side of the room. "This piece-of-shit software won't let us send additional current through the third rail. We're stuck at 925 volts."

Morgan coughed again, this time to clear a lump of panic from his throat. The words didn't make sense. He didn't know why Reid was be jumping up and down in a train on the Green Line. He didn't have complete information, so he couldn't fathom an explanation. All he knew was that Reid was still diverting current from the detonator, and that was the only thing that mattered.

"Don't worry," Morgan reassured Preston, "There's only one agent in the subway system. His name is Dr. Spencer Reid, and he's diverting current from the detonator."

"We know what he's doing, Agent Morgan," Vicki smirked, "Let's see how long he can keep at it."

"We still have Beta," Preston reassured the other cult members. "We'd rather have both devices in place, but Beta is good enough on its own."

"No, it's not!" Vicki snapped. "Beta is too small! It was always the smaller one. Alpha was the important one. I warned you about James. You shouldn't have trusted him. You should've let me go with him. But no...You thought he was the big old brain who could handle everything on his own."

"I'm sorry, Vicki," Preston held out his hands helplessly. "Can we not argue about this right now? There's nothing we can do about James, but we still have Beta ready to go. We're still on track. Only 75 volts to go. We'll make it. That guy on the train can't go on forever."

"We'd better make it," Vicki snarled under her breath.

She turned her back on Preston and collapsed sullenly into a chair. She slammed her feet angrily upon a desk and lit a cigarette.

Morgan digested the exchange. He had learned a lot in the past few minutes. By all appearances, Vicki was the de facto leader of the cult. Whenever she spoke, the cult members looked at her face. Whenever she moved, the cult members followed her motions. Charles Preston did not command their attention the way Vicki did. Morgan guessed that Preston was merely Mr. Moneybags.

In battle, it was best to attack the leader. Morgan resisted the temptation. His strategy was not based on attack and counterattack, at least not yet. At this stage of the operation, his strategy was based on empathy, so he turned towards Charles Preston.

"You're right," Morgan said to Preston, "You still have Beta. To be honest, I'm quite impressed with your work. I'm a bomb expert and an expert in obsessional crimes, so your work is right up my alley. I'd like to learn more about your motives."

"Our motives are simple," Preston answered calmly, "We wish to escape."

"Escape from what?" Morgan asked.

"From the world," Preston replied, "From humans and humanity. Humanity is old and tired and dirty. And humans? Don't even get me started on humans. What a collection of ugly, stupid, worthless scraps of garbage we've all become."

"What about yourself?" Morgan asked carefully, "Are you including yourself in that description?"

"Of course," Preston said, "Of course I'm including myself. I'm no better than any other human. I'm just as ugly, stupid, and worthless as every other scrap of garbage on this planet."

"I agree with you," Morgan said, "Both about humanity and humans. Humanity - old and tired and dirty...What a perfect description! And humans - ugly, stupid, worthless. I see that everyday in my line of work."

"You're a very pessimistic man, Agent Morgan," Preston remarked. "You're not what I expected from an FBI agent."

"When you understand people as well as I do, you draw the most obvious conclusions about them," Morgan explained. "When you see what I see, it's easy to get a little down on the entire human species. I agree with you about everything. Even about yourself - just as ugly, stupid, and worthless as all the rest of us. You, me, Reid, Vicki...We're all garbage."

"Well...I..." Preston failed to hide his agitation.

Morgan failed to hide his disdain. Charles Preston was such an easy target. He was so easily agitated. Morgan didn't even have to raise his hackles. All he had to do was agree.

Morgan held the upper hand, because he understood human behavior. All he had to do was listen and agree. All he had to do was show empathy. Except that he was doing it in the nasty manner in which one showed empathy to oneself, not in the kind manner in which one showed empathy to others. He spoke to Preston in the voice that Preston used to speak to himself. No one enjoyed hearing one's own voice emanating from someone else's mouth. Morgan agreed with Preston, and Preston disagreed with Morgan. It was a defensive mechanism. Surely, Charles Preston was not the ugliest, stupidest, most worthless human in the old, tired, dirty human species. There was still Vicki.

"Ugh," Vicki sighed in disgust. "I don't want to hear anymore of your needy self-loathing, Charlie. I've been listening to it for years, and I'm sick and tired of it. Can we please just detonate this thing already?" she asked the other cult members.

"We're getting close," said a paunchy man in his early-40s. "Another 75 volts...Come on, you idiot, stop jumping, drop dead...Let us have our voltage..."

"Actually, I'm more interested in what happens next," Vicki said, "What happens after the explosion. "Let me tell you what it's going to be like, Agent Morgan. It's going to be like a honeycomb. A honeycomb hanging in space, like a galactic supercluster, hundreds of millions of light years across. Everyone, human or non-human, will be there. We'll all have our own little cubbyholes in the honeycomb. We'll all meet up there. We'll visit each other and learn about each other. It's going to be a collection of the best - the best of our kind and the best of everyone else's kind."

"I thought humans were ugly, stupid, and worthless," said Morgan.

"Most are," Vicki replied. "I don't consider myself one of them, no matter what he says," she jerked her thumb at Preston. "I'm better than most. We all have our own reasons for escape, and mine don't coincide with anyone else's."

"For me, it's all about release," Preston joined in. "I want to escape, and I don't care who or what is waiting for me on the other side. I just want to escape. I want to go out with a bang rather than a whimper. It saddens me that the universe is going to end in the Big Chill. I'd prefer the Big Crunch. The Big Crunch matches up so well with the Big Bang."

"Explosive in birth and death?" Morgan asked.

"Yes," Preston agreed, "Explosive release!"

Morgan swallowed nervously at Preston's words. They bothered him even more than Vicki's strange honeycomb visions. He was officially in over his head. Preston was a suicidal manic-depressive seeking blissful release in a thermonuclear explosion. Preston a depressed version of Adrian Bale. Vicki was phenonmenon unto herself. She was a deluded narcissist seeking bizarre communion with extraterrestrials in an imaginary celestial afterlife. Morgan wondered about the other cult members. The CP1919 cult appeared to be a hodge-podge of psychiatric disorders. Morgan didn't think that he could battle multiple disoders at once. Perhaps he could find a way to pit them against each other.

"950 volts!" said an elderly woman from the nearest computer screen. "We shot up 25 volts in three minutes!"

"Yes!" Vicki grinned in excitement, "I knew that idiot would lose it sooner or later. Did he really think that he'd be able to jump up and down forever?"

"Dr. Reid?" Pete yelled desperately. "Are you OK? We're up to 950 volts!"

"Dr. Reid!" Mike yelled with him. "Please don't give up! You have to keep going! You're the only thing standing in the way of those cult freaks. No one has heard from Agent Morgan since he disappeared into the feeder station. The overhead lines aren't working. You're the only thing we have!"

The voices carried fear untinged by confusion. Morgan gave in to panic. He breathed faster and faster. Reason deserted him, and his mind raced, searchng for salvation in every nook and cranny.

Plan B was failing. It had done its job for as long as it could, but its nature had always doomed it to failure. Plan A operated alone, under the assumption that Plan B had failed. The two plans, A and B, had gone the way of the two devices, Alpha and Beta. Alpha was dead, and so was B. Morgan had A, and the cult had Beta. Morgan held the upper hand. As with brain and brawn, B was not the equal of A, Beta was not the equal of Alpha, and neither were Beta and A equals.

As Albert Einstein once said, "Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."

* * *

Next up: Reid's life continues to suck. Morgan becomes Gideon, so his life sucks as well. Vicki dies in a grease fire. - Well, not really, but she'll get her comeuppance. :)


	11. Chapter 11

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.

* * *

Chapter 11

North Station T Station  
October 16, 2010

"Human sacrifice sustains the universe," Morgan said to Preston.

Preston raised his eyebrows in an expression of interest. Vicki rolled her eyes and tapped her manicured fingernails against the surface of a metal desk. To the profiler, both behaviors boded well.

The profiler harkened back to his days as an athlete at Northwestern. He took on the role of his football coach. As a coach, he had a goal for Charles Preston to reach, and this starting point, though creative, was as good as any other. Women didn't play football, so the coach didn't have a goal for Vicki to reach.

"The Aztecs believed that human sacrifice sustained the universe," Morgan explained. "That's why they performed so many human sacrifices, sometimes killing tens of thousands of people over just a few days. They believed that they were repaying a debt to the gods and that humans were the highest tribute they could offer."

"Thanks for the morbid fairy tale, Agent Morgan," Vicki leaned back dangerously in her chair. "What's the voltage?" she asked the rest of the room.

"950 and rising," said a mindless drone behind a computer screen.

"Good, keep me updated," Vicki ordered, lolling her head back to stare at the ceiling.

"What was the debt?" Preston asked Morgan, "What kind of debt would require human sacrifice?"

"The debt of creation," Morgan replied. "In Aztec mythology, the gods sacrificed themselves to create the universe. Everything in the universe, including humans, sprang from the blood and gore of the gods. Therefore, humanity was obligated to repay the gods through sacrifices of their own. Human sacrifice sustained the universe. Without human sacrifice, the universe would have collapsed. The Sun would not have risen to herald the beginning of a new 52-year cycle in the calendar. A Big Chill would have set in."

"They were afraid of a Big Chill," Preston said knowingly. "They were afraid to die with a whimper, so they chose a different path for themselves. Just like..."

"No!" Morgan nipped the thought in the bud. "They were afraid to die with a whimper, so they took action to sustain their universe. Each sacrifice was a conscious decision to continue."

"Didn't they rip the beating hearts out of living people?" Preston asked curiously.

"Yeah, the sacrifice ritual was quite brutal," Morgan replied. "The hearts were offerings to the Sun God. Those who died as sacrifices ascended to a heavenly afterlife known as the 'House of the Sun'. Sacrifice was considered the most honorable way to die."

"Such logical reasoning behind such deranged behavior," Preston mused, "Such purpose in life and death."

"Those who died of natural causes, those who died with a whimper, descended into a dark tortured afterlife," Morgan said. "It was preferable to go out with a bang."

"It's all about control," Preston agreed. "Even though human sacrifice was a brutal practice, there's actually a lot to admire about the Mesoamerican worldview. The Aztecs may not have been the most advanced civilization of their time, but they took matters into their own hands. They believed in themselves. They themselves held ultimate control over the fate of their universe."

"Yeah, they may have ripped the beating hearts out of living people, but they sure did control the fate of their universe," Morgan remarked.

"Control...Control," Preston repeated. "To have control...To have control over yourself...To have control over others...Easier said than done."

"Control is the one thing you've always lacked," Morgan profiled Charles Preston. "You've always had everything except for control. You were born into a wealthy family. You enjoyed an Ivy League education. You inherited the family business. You got married and had children. One day, when you were in your forties, you found yourself a successful businessman with a family, and you didn't like what you found. This was not the life that you had chosen for yourself. It was the life that you had been groomed for from birth. You hadn't chosen it, and you didn't want it. You questioned the meaning of your life. You suffered an existential crisis. An existential crisis that occurs in middle age is more commonly known as a mid-life crisis. You became depressed. You spent time in therapy. You took meds, switching from one to another, finding that none of them helped you. Your marriage fell apart. It had never been strong to begin with, so all it took was a mid-life crisis for your wife to leave you. She took the kids with her. The judge awarded her full custody after he uncovered your mental health issues. They were a strike against you. Your family moved away. They're not here today. You haven't seen your kids in years. They're teenagers now. The oldest one is almost college-aged. You missed out on their childhoods, even when they were with you, because you were too busy trying to fix yourself. Your life had not been chosen by you, so you lacked the conviction to follow through with it. It all comes back to control."

"After your family left you, you felt impotent," Morgan continued his profile. "You thirsted for control. Any kind of control was desirable. You founded this organization to satisfy that deep-seated desire. You founded a cult for the express purpose of installing yourself as a cult leader. You didn't care about the ideology of the cult. For you, any ideology would have fit the bill. One day, you met a young woman who brought her own ideology with her. You made a mistake. You let her into the group. She infected the group with her ideas. Her passion overruled your apathy. Eventually, you lost control of the group. It didn't take long for her to supplant you as the leader. You were reduced to a treasurer. You were the bank. All the cult members looked to her for direction, and they all believed her delusions about the glorious afterlife in the celestial sphere. You went along with it, because as long as she was passionate about her ideology, she did all the work. She took control of the cult. She recruited members, she spread lies, she spent money. Once again, you were left in the dust."

"Actually, that's not entirely true," Morgan modified his profile. "You weren't left in the dust completely, because you were the one who recruited James Robert Leonard. James was your crowning glory. He brought skill and will. He had the technical expertise, he had a job with the MBTA, he had same motives as you did. Like you, he sought release from his unsatisfactory existence. He wanted to go out with a bang rather than a whimper. I don't know what his damage was, but I'm going to blame it on his parents. He's 27. That's still young enough for me to blame his parents. I bet he saw you as a surrogate father. You were good to him in ways that his own father could never hope to match. You shared common interests with him. You gave him spending money. He used the money for women, possibly for the first time in his life. However, you were not good enough. You could never hope to match whatever he needed. In the end, he betrayed you. You lost control of him as well. He was the last one who believed in you. Now, you have nothing. No one in this room believes in you. Everyone believes in her," Morgan pointed at Vicki. "Tell me, Charlie, is this really what you would have chosen for yourself?"

Morgan stopped in the midst of dead silence. Not a mouse click or keyboard tap was heard from any of the computers around the room. Everyone stared, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, at the profiler. Preston's face gave him away. The profile was correct.

Morgan clenched and unclenched his fists in an effort to relax. He was shaken. It was uncharacteristic for Derek Morgan to go on profiling tirades. He was a good profiler, but he was not used to such behavior from himself. He reminded himself of someone else. What Morgan had done was something that Gideon would have done in his heyday, before Gideon had been broken down and tossed away by the rigors of the job.

Morgan revised the thought as soon as he thought it. Gideon had not been broken down by the job. Gideon had been broken down by himself. Morgan was determined to seek a different fate for himself.

"I understand how you feel," Morgan said kindly to the stunned face of Charles Preston. "I know what it's like to lack control. I never had any either, not when I was growing up and not when I was grown up. Believe me, I understand."

"You understand?" Preston snorted in disbelief, "Do you really expect me to believe that?"

"No, I don't expect you to believe that," Morgan replied, "I don't expect you to believe anything without evidence."

"What's the evidence?" Preston asked in challenge.

Morgan looked Preston in the eye and responded without hesitation.

"For years, as a teenager, I was sexually abused by the man that I considered my surrogate father, after my own father was shot and killed in front of me. How's that for control?"

Preston averted his eyes from the disclosure. Morgan swallowed a lump in his throat. He inhaled deeply to steady his breathing. He had learned something about himself. Under duress, he was capable of anything.

"Yes! Only 25 more volts to go!" an elderly woman said from the desk next to Vicki.

"Thanks, Pat," Vicki smiled encouragingly. "You're doing great. Keep it up!"

She looked at Morgan with a triumphant glint in her light blue eyes. She hugged Pat warmly without leaving her seat. Morgan focused his gaze upon the grandmotherly woman in the flowery sweater. He wondered how exactly such a woman had ended up in such a cult. He had been wrong about the cult. It was not so much a cult of ideology as a cult of personality. Vicki was the personality who held everyone under her spell. She was beautiful, intelligent, and charismatic. Beauty, intelligence, and charisma were admirable qualities, but they were not nearly enough for their owner to lead. Their owner would also have to find followers who wished to be led. Such people were ones who had already given up on themselves. They lacked control, and they desired none.

At 975 volts, Morgan switched into his coaching persona. He would have preferred to remain a profiler, but 975 volts was too close for comfort. He no longer coached football. He coached dodgeball, all genders allowed. He had a goal for Preston, and he had a goal for Vicki.

"It's not too late," Morgan said to Preston. "You can take back control of your own life. Why don't you do it?"

"I already told you," Preston sighed. "I'm past all that. All I want is release. I'm opting out."

"You didn't tell me that," Morgan argued, "You told yourself that. There's a big difference. As an FBI agent, I specialize in psychology. I understand human behavior. That's how I figured out all that stuff about you. I'm not clairvoyant. I'm observant. I can tell when you're lying to yourself. You said it yourself. You said that you admired the Mesoamerican worldview, because the Aztecs, even though they were not the most advanced civilization of their time, took matters into their own hands. They sustained their universe, even though their sacrifices were decidedly brutal. These were your own words, and you believed them. More than anything, you want to take matters into your own hands."

"I've already taken matters into my own hands!" Preston insisted. "What do you think I'm doing here? What do you think you're doing here?"

"I'm here, because she let me in," Morgan glanced at Vicki. "She let me in, without asking you, because she wanted to see the look on my face when the bombs went off. Unfortunately, she can only see the look on my face when the one bomb goes off, when Beta goes off. You should recall that Alpha is dead. That was another circumstance that you weren't able to control."

"What exactly do you want from me, Agent Morgan?" Preston asked. "Don't answer that!" he snapped. "I know what you want from me, but it doesn't matter what you say. I'm not going to stop what I'm doing. I'm going to die a slow painful death. We all are. We're going to die of radiation poisoning, over hours for some of us, over days for others. I'm ready for it, as long as it gets me out of this body and off of this planet."

"Do you really believe that load of crock that she's fed you?" Morgan spoke loudly.

"No, I don't," Preston replied, "But I believe that there's something on the other side. I don't know what it is, but there's something. Anything is better than this. You know, Agent Morgan, you're not the only one who understands human behavior. Don't you think that I'm aware of my own behavior? I've acquired a great deal of self-awareness from my years in therapy. I've reached a stage where I have no choice but to satisfy my emotional needs. What I need is release, and the only way for me to get it is to set off this nuclear weapon, go out with a bang, and take as many ugly, stupid, worthless humans with me as humanly possible."

"What if you could experience the same release some other way?" Morgan asked. "What if there were an alternative? Maybe you could seize control and get release at the same time. Two for the price of one?"

"What could possibly be a better form of release than setting off a nuclear weapon?" Preston asked.

"Your ex-wife was a blonde woman with light blue eyes. She was beautiful, intelligent, and charismatic," Morgan profiled again. "She was also arrogant and mean. She, not you, was the head of the household. She supplanted you in your own family. Your children respected her, not you. She was a major contributor to your mid-life crisis. Without her, you would never have spiraled into a deep depression. You were never quite as weak as you had believed yourself to be. She was the one who drove you 'crazy'."

"I haven't seen my ex-wife in years," Preston said coldly, "I don't think about her anymore. Leave my children out of this."

"I'm sorry," Morgan apologized. "I didn't mean to drag your children into it. I don't really know that much about your family. All I know is you have a gun," he pointed at a revolver in its holster on Preston's belt. "Your gun was the only thing that prevented me from shooting all of you when I came in here."

"You couldn't have shot all of us," Preston said, "I would've shot you before you could've shot any of us."

"I agree," Morgan said. "I'm not going to shoot anyone. I'm a profiler. Profilers aren't even required to carry guns. But I do carry a gun, because I know that profiling isn't always enough. Sometimes, a gun can help you in a way that a profile can't. Don't tell me you haven't thought about it."

"Thought about what?" Preston asked nervously.

"You have a gun," Morgan pointed at Preston. "Shoot her," Morgan pointed at Vicki, "Kill her."

Human sacrifice sustained the universe. Derek Morgan was taking matters into his own hands. He was choosing who to sacrifice.

* * *

Government Center T Station  
October 16, 2010

Reid wondered if it was possible for a heart to beat its way out of a living person, and if so, how long the person would...The thought took up too much energy, so he abandoned it mid-stream.

He jumped up and down over the floor. He no longer jumped continuously. He was sure that jumping continuously would cause him to die. He took breaks a few seconds at a time. He was no longer sweating or overheating. He was cold and clammy. He jumped continuously for several minutes. As a reward, he took a longer break to put his clothes back on. After he put his clothes back on, he felt warmer and more dignified, so he jumped continously for several more minutes.

Reid was convinced that he was going to fail. Failure would wrench the final vestige of control out of his cold dead fingers. He couldn't stomach the thought. It was not the failure that bothered him, but the loss of control. He couldn't bear the thought. The thought took too much energy, so he wiped it out of his mind.

"We're dead, we're dead, we're dead," Reid heard a voice chanting through the radio.

He couldn't tell if it was Pete or Mike, his cheerleaders at the Arlington feeder station. Voices blended together and sounded the same in his pounding head.

"Can you please shut up?" the other voice intoned distantly from the driver's compartment.

The voices expressed displeasure. They expressed discord. Reid jumped harder to heal the schism. Invisible people that he had never laid eyes on bickered with each other through the radio of a subway train. The situation was ridiculous. It was not Reid's idea of Saturday Afternoon Fun.

Reid's idea of Saturday Afternoon Fun was a visit to the free museums on the National Mall. He could spend hours gazing at the stuffed animals in the Museum of Natural History. He considered them his taciturn taxidermied friends. They didn't consume energy, and they didn't produce energy. They didn't contribute to the rising entropy of the universe. They were excellent specimens of stasis. Reid wished to become one with them. Life would be so much easier if he could just relinquish control.

He couldn't do it.

"Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!"

* * *

North Station T Station  
October 16, 2010

"Charlie, don't!" Vicki backed away from the revolver pointed at her forehead.

"Charlie, please..." she held up her hands in a gesture of surrender, even though she was not carrying a weapon.

That had been an act of arrogance that she had already lived to regret.

Charles Preston pressed the revolver against Vicki's smooth unblemished forehead. When he fired, the bullet entered the cerebral cortex and traveled through the frontal, temporal, and occipital lobes before exiting through a mass of shiny blonde hair. Blood and gore poured from the front and back of the trajectory. The offering satisfied the gods and sustained the universe. The husk of former humanity fell to the floor. Whether its soul found its way to the honeycomb in the heavens was a question that would never be answered. Whether its soul communed with its extraterrestrial friends was a question that would never be asked.

"Turn down the voltage!" Morgan ordered the shocked cult members. "Do it!" he aimed his gun at Pat.

"We can't!" Pat shrieked in panic, "I'm sorry, but we can't! "The program is frozen. It'll unfreeze itself eventually, but we've already sent the order to turn it up to 1,000. It works like a printer queue. Once the orders are given, the program carries them out one by one. It'll turn up the voltage automatically."

"Damn it! Get me on the radio to the train!" Morgan demanded.

"Alright, channel 12, channel 12," Patty fiddled with a button on the switchboard. "Got it! Channel 12! You can talk now."

"Reid! Are you there? It's Morgan!"

Nothing.

"Reid! Listen to me! Keep going! Keep doing what you're doing! The detonator goes off at 1,000 volts. We're up to 975. We need you to keep going! We'll figure out a way to de-activate the device from here. In the meantime, you have to keep going!"

Nothing.

Morgan started to slam his fist into the switchboard, but stopped himself before he could destroy anything. He rebuked himself silently. Why had he expected a response from Reid? Reid was listening. The radio was set to receive. No response was the best response.

"How do we de-activate the device?" Morgan asked the room.

"Um...I know how to do it," Preston stammered, his face scarlet with shock.

Morgan checked the computer screen for the state of the program. It was still frozen, so he allowed himself a smidgeon of time. He needed time to consider Charles Preston. He needed even more time to consider himself, but there was not time for that at the present time.

Morgan had goaded Preston into an act of murder. With the act, Preston had become a new man. He had seized control, and he had gotten release. He had passed a test. The young blonde woman was the only one who had suffered. It didn't matter whether or not she deserved her brutal comeuppance. Human sacrifice sustained the universe. Those who took matters into their own hands often got their hands dirty. It was the cost of the job.

"Calm down, Charlie," Morgan soothed Preston. "You did the right thing. You took back control. You can go a step further. You can tell us how to de-activate the device. James must have told you."

"He did...I'm trying to remember...Give me a chance..." Preston clutched his head in his hands.

Neither his verbal language or his body language inspired confidence. Morgan wondered if he should believe the words that came out of Preston's mouth. He realized that he had little choice in the matter. His instinct told him to believe. It even told him to trust.

"The device is located..."

"Over here, Charlie," Morgan pointed to the radio. "Say it into the radio. Reid will be able to hear you. Give him the instructions, and he'll de-activate the device for us."

"The device is located in a machine room on the left side of the northbound track, a third of the way from Government Center to Haymarket. It's connected to an out-of-gauge rail attached to the third rail. You need to get into the machine room and locate two wires that extend through a hole in the floor. There's a blue wire and a red wire. You need to cut..."

"Hold it!" Morgan held up his hand. "Reid!" he yelled into the radio. "Don't do it yet! We still have time. The program is frozen. So is the voltage. Keep going!"

"Are you sure?" Morgan bored his dark brown eyes into Preston's grayish-blue ones, "Tell me that you're sure."

"I'm sure!" Preston replied confidently. "I'm not lying to you, Agent Morgan. I swear I'm telling the truth. I wouldn't lie to you, not anymore, not after this..." he refrained from looking at Vicki's body on the floor.

"I believe you," Morgan said. "But I need you to say it again. Say it back to me again. I'll give the final order to cut the wire."

"The device is located in a machine room on the left side of the northbound track, a third of the way from Government Center to Haymarket. It's connected to an out-of-gauge rail attached to the third rail. Your guy needs to get into the machine room and locate two wires that extend through a hole in the floor. There's a blue wire and a red wire. He needs to cut..."

"Stop!" Morgan held up his hand again.

He went over the directions in his head, testing their logic, searching for inconsistencies in the simple words. Finding none, he went over them again. Again, he found none, but he continued going over them. Each time he found nothing, he went over them again. He was determined to find something wrong with them.

Preston was ready to tell Morgan which wire to cut, but Morgan was not yet ready to listen.

Morgan believed Preston. He believed that Preston was not lying to him. Preston was not lying to Morgan the way that Bale had lied to Gideon.

Morgan did not trust Preston. He did not trust Preston the way that he did not trust any stranger. Morgan did not have faith in Preston the way that Morgan had faith in Reid.

If Preston told Morgan which wire to cut, then Morgan would have to tell Reid which wire to cut. If Morgan made a mistake, then Morgan would die, Reid would die, and so would hordes of ugly, stupid, worthless humans. Most of them, including Morgan, would die a slow painful death over the course of hours or days. Reid would die a quick death. If Morgan made a mistake, then Reid would be the first one to die.

The prospect of immediate death stared Morgan in the face. He considered an age-old dilemma.

In Philosophy 101, the professor would present a dilemma, usually involving a traffic accident, that would entail sacrificing one life to save many other lives. The professor would ask the students, "Was it right to sacrifice one life to save many other lives?" The answer was that it was wrong. Morgan considered the answer a load of crock. He favored a middle course. In theory, it was wrong to sacrifice one life to save many other lives. In practice, it was what it was.

The philosophical dilemma did not apply perfectly to the situation at hand. The situation at hand entailed death for everyone. It was only the order of death that differed. But the dilemma clarified Morgan's thinking. He held the answer firmly in his grasp. If Morgan had to sacrifice one life to save many other lives, then he would choose to sacrifice himself. If Morgan could not sacrifice himself but he could sacrifice Reid, then he would choose to sacrifice Reid. It was what it was.

"We have to de-activate the device," Morgan said to Preston, "Which wire do we cut?"

"Cut the red wire," Preston replied.

"Cut the red wire?" Morgan asked Preston.

"Cut the red wire," Preston confirmed.

"Cut the red wire," Morgan spoke into the radio.

* * *

Next up: the last chapter. Important questions will be answered, such as: How does Morgan know so much about the Aztecs? Will Morgan get a leash for Reid? Will Reid eat more junk food? And last and least importantly, what will happen with the wire-cutting?


	12. Chapter 12

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.

* * *

Chapter 12

Government Center T Station  
October 16, 2010

The blast and heat from the enhanced radiation weapon, also known as a neutron bomb, collapsed the T station and vaporized the occupants. The high-energy neutrons from the fusion reactions escaped the flimsy casing of the reaction chamber. They radiated in all directions, penetrating buildings and vehicles and bodies. Inside bodies, they entered atomic nuclei of hydrogen, wherever hydrogen was found, be it in DNA or protein or water. The nuclei collapsed, taking with them the electron clouds that glued molecules together. The cells, bags of molecules large and small, apoptosed, dismantling themselves in an act of surrender. They took their bodies with them. The bodies had not chosen to be sacrificed, so their souls descended into a dark tortured afterlife.

In the blast zone, those who had not been vaporized experienced the immediate effects of radiation poisoning. Their bodies absorbed a dose of 20 to 80 grays. Vomiting, seizing, and pain dominated their final hours.

In humans, the LD50 for radiation poisoning was 6 grays. Half of all people exposed to such a dose died, with or without medical treatment. Such a dose made itself known within a circle of radius 1 mile. On the Shawmut Peninsula, the scrap of landfilled earth under the hub of the city, all the survivors rejoiced, thinking that they had weathered the crisis. They were wrong. At 6 grays, the latent period for radiation poisoning lasted no longer than a week. Once the symptoms appeared, the poisoned would die a slow painful death over 48 hours. Their hair would not have time to fall out. Everyone who retained their hair would die later, of cancer, most likely leukemia, caused by radiation-induced DNA damage on a cloudy fall day in October. By then, they would hardly be remembered, because the city would have been refilled, with earth and with inhabitants.

"Cut the red wire," Reid thought to himself as he jumped up and down over the floor, "Cut the red wire."

Knowing that his Physical Education class was coming to an end, Reid jumped harder. He jumped, and he thought, all at the same time. He was surprised that he could still scrounge up the energy to entertain himself with visions of the post-nuclear future. The intrusion relieved only some of his boredom. He would have to relieve the remainder with action.

Reid stopped jumping. He stumbled across the passenger car, steadying himself on poles as he made his way into the driver's compartment. It took some time to recover the rhythm of walking.

In the driver's compartment, Reid set the radio to speak. He spoke breathlessly into the radio.

"Mor...Mor...gan? Wha...vol...age?"

"Oh God, Reid! It's so good to hear your voice! 975! We're stuck at 975! Did you hear all that stuff about de-activating the device?"

"Yeah...Cut...th...r...ire..."

"Cut the red wire! Say it back to me, Reid."

"Cu...re...wi..."

"Come on, Reid, say it back to me clearly! Just once!"

"Cut the red wire!" Reid forced the words out of his burning throat.

"Yes! Do it, Reid! Do it now! Please do it!" multiple voices pleaded through the radio.

"Cut the red wire," Reid thought to himself as he wiggled his way out of the driver's side window, "Cut the red wire."

He flicked on a cigarette lighter to illuminate the dark subway tunnel. It was almost but not completely dark, but Reid was no longer afraid. Anything was better than jumping up and down over the floor.

Without hesitation, Reid embarked upon his journey. He knew what he had to do.

Morgan had told him what to do, clear as the cloudy day through the cracks in the station roof. As soon as he found the machine room, as soon as he picked the lock to get in, as soon as he located the wires through the hole in the floor, he would cut the red wire.

Reid was excited. His mission was approaching an end. All he had to do was infiltrate the chamber of the Queen to destroy the hive from within. Morgan had told him what to do, and Reid would do it just as Morgan had told him. Reid had always wanted to be a mindless drone, if only for a moment.

* * *

North Station T Station  
October 16, 2010

Morgan stared at the other agents in the feeder station. The other agents stared at the computer screen near the switchboard. The computer screen stared back, frozen, displaying a number in small white letters in one of its windows.

The number jumped in a quantized manner, without the scrolling of digits. Previously, it had read 975. Now, it read 1,000.

The sudden transition sent a shock wave through the room. The room fell silent. Through the radio, all was silent as well. If one didn't know better, one would have thought that the universe was dying with nary a whimper.

"Morgan? I cut the red wire!" Reid's voice sputtered breathlessly through the radio. "I cut the red wire! Nothing happened! I cut the red wire! Nothing happened!"

"He cut the red wire! Nothing happened!" Agent Claire McDunkin was the first to respond.

"Nothing happened!" Agent Edward Laurentis, the Special Agent in Charge at the Boston Field Office, shed his shroud of dignity and hugged the visiting agent from the Counterterrorism Division.

"Nothing happened," Morgan sighed softly into his cell phone.

Screams erupted from the distant Round Table Room. Garcia's scream was the most readily identifiable, but Morgan could swear that Hotch was screaming too. Someone was crying, but Morgan couldn't tell who it was. The crying sounds were not all the same timbre, so Morgan guessed that more than one person was crying.

"Reid? You OK?" Morgan murmured into the radio.

"I can see the sky," Reid replied in his little girl voice.

"What?"

"I can see the sky again," Reid said, "I can see the sky through the cracks in the station roof. My cell phone has reception again...Two bars..."

"Shit!" Morgan yelled to himself.

"Shit!" Morgan yelled into the radio. "Wait there, Reid! Don't move! I'm coming for you! Wait on the platform! The southbound side!"

Morgan paused in mid-stance, giving the room a quick once-over before darting out the door of the feeder station. Inside, everyone was busy, hugging each other or sighing in relief or calling their colleagues to report the good news. No one noticed Morgan's panic. None of anyone else's friends was trapped in a collapsing subway station.

Without hesitation, Morgan embarked upon his journey. He knew what he had to do.

While he had prepared to confront the cult, he had spotted a Green Line train parked on the southbound track inside North Station. At the time, he had been jealous, thinking that he, not Reid, should have been the one who got to hurtle a train down the track at 100 mph. His chance had finally arrived.

Unlike northbound trains, southbound trains on the Green Line were powered by the third rail all the way from North Station to Kenmore, where the lines branched off and emerged into the open air on their way to the western suburbs. Today, the third rail, which normally operated at 600 volts, operated at 1,000 volts. For the train, more power meant more momentum. Momentum was what the train needed to ram through the walls of rubble that sealed off the fortress on either side.

As a profiler, a bomb expert, and an expert in obsessional crimes, Morgan didn't know what would happen when the train plowed into a wall of rubble. He didn't know anything about the thickness of the wall or the configuration of the rubble on the track. All he knew was that, regardless of the consequences, he was taking matters into his own hands.

He had won, so now was no longer the time for practicalities. Now was the time for ideals. No matter how well things worked out in the end, it was still wrong to sacrifice one life to save many other lives. Ideally, Morgan would choose the same thing every time. He would choose to sacrifice no one.

* * *

Green Line  
October 16, 2010

The Green Line train hurtled towards Haymarket at 80 mph. It was an old train, and its rickety windows and doors rattled as air gushed past it. Chihuahua-sized rats, granted temporary reprieve from vaporization and radiation poisoning, skittered away from the advancing locomotive.

Near Haymarket, the train bore down upon the first wall of rubble. The driver engaged his sense of touch, pressing down upon the plastic buttons until his fingernails turned white and his knuckles turned sore. He slammed his left index finger into the button that increased the speed of the train. The train sped up, intoxicating the driver with its power. The driver braced himself between his seat and the dashboard, hardly daring to duck from the impact. His hand searched desperately for a missing throttle to clutch.

At 90 mph, the train plowed into a wall of rubble. The rubble crumbled before the momentum of the train. The wall collapsed downwards and sideways as the driver increased the speed to 100 mph. A hefty hunk of concrete flew through the front windshield, whizzing by the driver and slamming into a pole in the passenger car. Except for the physical reflex of ducking, the driver paid no attention to the flying debris. He was drunk upon the power of the train. He was high upon his own power. He recalled times in his life when, under the influence of endorphins, he had pushed past his physical limits to reach new personal bests. Such was his high. Unfortunately, as all junkies knew, highs never lasted. Fortunately, once junkies overcame their drug addictions, highs no longer needed to last.

Reid scurried behind the snack stand to avoid the stray pieces of rubble that came flying, with the train, into the T station. The train screeched and grinded against the rails, both running and third, as it decelerated onto the platform. Someone cursed loudly through a hole in the windshield. When the cursing stopped, Reid peeked timidly around the corner of the snack stand. He was greeted with curses.

"Damn it, Reid! What are you doing over there? Get on the goddamned train! Move your skinny ass! Come on!" Morgan poked his head out the hole in the windshield and gestured wildly towards the crumpled door of the first passenger car.

Reid moved his skinny ass, that which had gotten ever skinnier over the course of the arduous day. He had lost several pounds that he could not afford to lose. It took all his remaining energy to shuffle across the platform and climb up the steps into the dilapidated train. Once he entered, he collapsed onto the filthy floor and rolled himself under a row of seats. He gasped at the disgusting detritus that had accumulated under the seats over the decades. It did not alleviate his building nausea. He fooled himself into feeling better when he remembered that the nausea, now that the bomb had been defused, would pass.

"Go! Go! Go!" Reid yelled at Morgan from his fetal position on the floor.

"Going! Going! Going!" Morgan pushed the train into motion. "Brace yourself, Reid! Don't let the concrete whack your precious little head! Don't let the glass ruin your pretty little face!"

The Green Line train hurtled towards Park Street at 80 mph. It hurtled past Park Street at 90 mph. Near Bolyston, the train crashed through a wall of rubble at 100 mph. The rubble slowed down the train, enough to ensure its safe passage through the sharp turn west, away from the Shawmut Peninsula and towards the Back Bay. Stray pieces of rubble flitted into the gutters on either side of the track. One piece flitted into the braking mechanism of the train. Near Arlington, beyond the inner and outer hubs of the hub-and-spoke system, the train did not stop as the driver had ordered it to stop.

"Shit! Reid! The brakes are stuck!" Morgan yelled in panic.

"There's an emergency brake under the dashboard," Reid crawled towards the driver's compartment. "It's a lever! Pull it towards you! Pull it!"

"Where? Where? I can't find it!" Morgan fumbled under the dashboard with one hand while turning the steering wheel with the other.

"Right there! The red lever! Pull it!" Reid hobbled into the driver's compartment. "Move over! Move your leg! Let me pull it!" he knelt down and tried to grasp the tantalizing lever that he could see but not reach.

"Move over! Move over!" Reid yelled at Morgan.

"I can't! There's a curve up ahead! I'm trying to turn the train!" Morgan yelled at Reid.

"Move over, so I can sit down!" Reid demanded.

"What? Where?" Morgan screamed.

"Move! Move! Move!" Reid tried to pull Morgan out of the driver's seat, but sent himself stumbling backwards instead.

At the curve in the track, Morgan shrank back against the driver's seat while removing one hand from the steering wheel. Reid took the opportunity to plop into Morgan's lap. He perched sideways across Morgan's legs, from which position he could reach the emergency brake with his left hand. He fumbled under the dashboard, found the lever, and pulled it as hard as he could. The train screeched and grinded against the rails, only the running ones, as it emerged into the open air. It slowed from its maximum speed of 133 mph, pieces of concrete dragging behind it in the undercarriage. A few feet past the tunnel, the train disconnected its shoes from the third rail and connected its pantographs to the overhead lines. The overhead lines provided no power. The train came to a lurching stop, almost derailing into a nearby parking lot, as its drivers braced themselves between the seat and the dashboard. At the nearby shopping center, shocked onlookers called 911. Customers dropped their newly purchased wares to rush over and help the passengers. Little did they know that there were no passengers, only drivers, and that the drivers had disentangled themselves from each other's unwanted embrace and fled out a crack in the crumpled door as soon as the train had stopped. Above all else, they wished to avoid the attention of the many other lives that they would have sacrificed their own lives to save.

Reid and Morgan drifted aimlessly down a side street behind the shopping center next to the Fenway Park T Station. They swayed as they walked, unable to disengage their legs from the rhythm of the speeding train. They resembled a pair of drunks, like the ones who frequented the Fenway Park area after Red Sox games. At the nearest intersection, they turned left and ambled up Brookline Ave towards the smell of delicious hot dogs filling the dreary fall afternoon. For the inhabitants of Boston, the weekend had gotten off to the worst possible start. On Friday, the Red Sox had lost Game 1 of the ALCS. On Saturday, their subway system, the T that millions of people depended on for transportation, had been blown up by a cult for reasons that would remain murky for decades to come. Due to the bombings, Game 2, originally scheduled for Saturday, had been postponed to Monday, much to the ire of rabid Red Sox and Yankee fans alike. The postponement had little effect upon the hot dog vendors near Fenway Park. At noon, they had powered up their roller grills to serve the mindless drones of the two evil empires who had lined up faithfully - rain or shine, chemical or nuclear - to acquire tickets to games labeled "TBD" on the MLB calendar.

"Tickets to Game 7," said a short troll-like man in a black trench coat and Yankee cap. "You want tickets to Game 7? 900 bucks for the both of you...Bleacher seats...Game 7!"

Reid frowned at the mention of 900 bucks. Morgan frowned at the mention of Game 7.

"Hey man, who won the game last night?" Morgan asked.

"The Yankees," the man replied triumphantly, "Grand slam in the top of the eighth. Where've you been, man? How can you possibly not know who won last night?"

"Damn it! I knew it!" Morgan slammed his cell phone to the ground. "I knew the bullpen would give it up! Damn it! I knew the bullpen would suck when it counted!"

"Sorry, man," said the ticket scalper. "Hey, you never know what's gonna happen in a Red Sox-Yankees series. The Sox might come back and push the series to Game 7. You want tickets to Game 7?" he waved a pair of tickets at Morgan.

"Hey Morgan?" Reid asked curiously, "Is ticket scalping legal in Massachusetts?"

"I don't know," Morgan replied, feigning confusion, "Maybe we should test it out. You ready, Reid?"

"Ready when you are," Reid answered.

"FBI!" Morgan and Reid whipped out their credentials at the same time.

"Holy f..." the hideous blood-sucking ticket scalper dropped the pair of tickets and bounced down the street as fast as his stubby little legs would carry him.

Morgan picked up the tickets with a rabid expression in his eyes. He wiggled his perfectly plucked eyebrows at Reid, who shied away from the suddenly unrecognizable man.

"Morgan?" Reid snapped his fingers in Morgan's face, "You alright?"

"Tickets to Game 7," Morgan waved the pair of tickets in Reid's face.

"Yeeeeeeeeah?" Reid hesitated.

"Do you think there's going to be a Game 7?" Morgan asked intently, clutching his rabid fingers in a death grip around Reid's skinny arm.

"Uh...Sure there is...I'm sure there's going to be a Game 7," Reid darted his eyes back and forth, trying to avoid the rabid eyes that stared into his soul.

"Let's use these tickets to go to the game together," Morgan suggested, holding the tickets reverently in his palm.

"Yeah, OK!" Reid chirped happily.

"Great!" Morgan recovered his normal self. "I'll call Hotch. He can get those Boston asshats to pick us up here."

"You destroyed your cell phone," Reid pointed at the fragments on the ground.

"Oh yeah, I guess I did," Morgan realized, "You've still got your cell phone, right?"

"Yeah, I'll call Hotch," Reid said. "While I'm doing that, can you do me a favor?" he leaned wearily against a chain link fence and lowered himself gingerly to the sidewalk.

"Yeah, Reid, anything," Morgan said seriously, "Are you OK?"

"Can you buy me...um...10 or 15 hot dogs from those vendors over there?" Reid pointed towards the ballpark.

"Sure, Pretty Boy," Morgan laughed, "I could use a snack myself," he turned to cross the street. "You call Hotch. I'll buy hot dogs."

"Good," Reid speed-dialed Hotch, "See you when you get back..." he muttered distractedly towards the retreating back of his buddy and hot dog dealer.

* * *

Game 4, World Series  
October 31, 2010  
San Diego Padres Boston Red Sox

On Saturday, October 23, 2010, a pair of FBI agents had to abuse their law enforcement credentials yet again, when they were threatened at Fenway Park for presenting counterfeit tickets to Game 7 of the ALCS. Luckily, a senator happened to be passing through behind them, recognized their faces, and took them aside to laud them for a job well done. The agents never made it into the ballpark for Game 7, but two days later, they received a pair of tickets to Game 4 of the World Series. The senator had pulled some strings and managed to finagle the tickets from the remaining evil empire that represented the American League in the Fall Classic.

In the bottom of the second inning, in record time, Reid noticed that the game had started, when a player in a white uniform hit a solo home run over his seat on the Green Monster.

"Hey Morgan!" Reid nudged his friend in the arm, sending Morgan's Fenway Frank into his eye rather than his mouth, "Game's started!"

"Yeah, Reid, thanks for the heads up," Morgan wiped ketchup and mustard out of his eyelids.

"Oh sorry," Reid said apologetically, "Here, let me make it up to you."

Morgan stared in disbelief as Reid unzipped his navy blue MBTA jacket. The jacket had been stolen from the back of the driver's seat on a Green Line train - Morgan's train - as the drivers had vacated the vehicle after the Great Nuclear Near-Miss of the ALCS. Reid wore the jacket often, having discovered that it was warmer and more oversized than his perfectly warm, already oversized FBI jacket. Tonight, he was wearing it over his Halloween costume. He had dressed up as a Rabid Red Sox Fan in a brand new white home jersey, his only pair of jeans that he had cut holes in on the flight over, his distressed baseball cap from Game 1 of the ALCS, and the aforementioned jacket. Every few minutes, he made rabid eyes at Morgan and clutched Morgan's arm in his rabid fingers to complete the terrifying effect. Morgan considered dispatching his friend to one of the many hospitals near the ballpark, but changed his mind when Reid opened his jacket to reveal the goodies within.

The jacket was both a jacket and a snack stand. Its fleecy interior was lined with rows and rows of junk food in individual packages. There were Twinkies, Ho-Ho's, and several different kinds of chips in Ziploc bags. Juice boxes were spread out in strategic locations to maintain the load-bearing balance of the jacket. There was even a collection of s'more-making components - chocolate bars, marshmallows, graham crackers, and one of the cigarette lighters that had been pilfered, along with avalanches of junk food, from the Government Center snack stand. Reid had been pleased to discover that the assemblage added more than ten pounds to his body weight.

From the snack stand, Reid offered Morgan a Twinkie, a Ho-Ho, and a juice box. The juice box advertised itself as Capri Sun cranberry juice. It was not. It was partially distilled moonshine of kitchen stove manufacture. Morgan grinned his approval as he took a sip from the bendy straw. Reid grinned like a jackal as he assembled a s'more and made to flick on the cigarette lighter.

"No!" Morgan slapped the lighter out of Reid's fingers. "That's not allowed! No fires at the ballpark! No fires on the Green Monster!"

"Oh sorry," Reid said apologetically, tossing the unlit s'more under his seat, following the example of all the other fans who did not understand the concept of designated waste receptacles. "How do you like your drink?" he asked secretively.

"You know I like it," Morgan grabbed a second juice box out of the jacket. "Hey Reid, don't you have any game-related statistics to blab about tonight?" he sucked away the last of his first juice box.

"No," Reid replied, "I've decided to enjoy the game without dragging sabermetrics into it. I find it more meditative this way," he leaned back into his cold metal seat. "Besides, it's one of the last games of the season. There's a whole off-season ahead for statistics!"

Morgan laughed and leaned back into his own seat. He turned his attention to the ulcer that was spontaneously forming in his stomach. It was now the fifth inning, and the game was tied, 1-1. The game had turned into a pitcher's duel, and every pitch of ball and swing of bat enlarged Morgan's ulcer. He sipped at his juice box to alleviate the symptoms.

In the top of the seventh, a player in a gray uniform sent a solo home run whizzing over Morgan's head. Morgan was spared the nasty gut-wrenching one-of-a-kind stomach drop that came with being a Red Sox fan by the failure of Reid's leash.

Several minutes earlier, Reid had returned from a trip to the restroom. He had taken off his jacket, leaned forward in his seat, and buried his face in "The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract". He scribbled equations onto a napkin while consulting a table of figures in the book. Apparently, meditation had lost out to statistics.

While Reid had leaned forward in his seat, the belt loops on his only pair of jeans had been exposed. Morgan had taken the opportunity to buckle Reid to his seat via a double carabinered bungee cord. The slack of the bungee cord had prevented Reid from noticing anything out of the ordinary. Morgan didn't think that Reid would have noticed anything anyway.

The whole operation was headed for success until Reid reached out with his baseball mitt (also part of his Rabid Red Sox Fan Halloween costume) to catch the home run ball that came whizzing over his head. The bungee cord stretched itself taut as Reid leaped out of his seat. The carabiner attached to the seat stayed put. The carabiner attached to the belt loop stayed put. The belt loop broke off from the jeans, sending itself flying towards the seat and sending its belted one flying face first towards the side of the Green Monster. Morgan reached out in panic, managing to grab a fistful of hair and wrench it backwards to prevent the gangly man from flipping over the side of the 37-foot-high wall over left field. Reid heaved a huge sigh of relief and put his head between his knees.

"Oh God, Reid! Sorry about that!" Morgan felt awful about almost killing his friend with the leash that had been meant to protect him. "I didn't mean to send you over the Green Monster!"

"What are you talking about?" Reid asked in confusion. "I was the one trying to catch that home run ball. It's not your fault that I can't stand up without tripping over my own two feet."

"Uh...Yeah...Right..." Morgan hastily averted his shifty eyes. "Too bad the ball fell back onto the field, huh? Don't worry, Kid, we can come back next season. We can come back every year. If you're lucky, you might catch a home run ball someday."

"Really?" Reid asked brightly. "You think we could come back next season? And every year?"

"Sure, why not?" Morgan asked, "We can always scalp the tickets. Plus, there's always the senator. He might send us tickets again. We can talk statistics too. What's baseball without statistics? You know, Reid," Morgan leaned towards his friend, slightly shy about his upcoming admission, "I've been thinking about your...endless geeky rants. I'm beginning to see the value in them."

"Really?" Reid widened his eyes in a hopeful expression of wonder.

"Yeah, one of your geeky rants kind of saved all our asses at the...you know," Morgan waved his hands to include all the asses in the ballpark. "You remember back in Game 1 of the ALCS when we talked about the Mesoamerican Ballgame?"

"Yes!" Reid answered in excitement. "The Mesoamerican Ballgame! A game similar to field hockey, played by Mesoamerican peoples over 3,000 years before the colonization of the New World. The winning team was showered with riches. The losing team was sacrificed to the gods."

"Yeah," Morgan said, "That was my tactic with the cult...With Preston...And the...girl...Vicki," he could hardly whisper the name.

"I know," Reid fiddled with his bendy straw, "I understand what you did. You sacrificed one person to save all the rest of us."

"I got my hands dirty," Morgan said. "It wasn't something that I wanted to do, and I'm not proud of it. I wince every time anyone congratulates me about it. But at the time, I kept recalling our conversation about the Aztecs and the Mesoamerican Ballgame. I couldn't get the idea out of my head. I kept thinking that if I were you, if I were smarter, then I'd be able to uncover an alternative solution. I couldn't. I couldn't do it in time. I ran out of time. I had to choose."

"I know," Reid tapped his juice box against his knee, "I know what it's like to get your hands dirty. We all do, to greater and lesser extents. It's one thing to kill an UnSub on a raid or in a hostage situation, in the heat of the moment, when you're trying to protect yourself and your friends. It's another thing to calculate the death of a living breathing person in front of you, no matter what kind of person they may be. Not having a problem with it would be the real problem."

"That was my problem for awhile," Reid continued. "I got my hands dirty, not by choice, and I didn't think that I'd ever be clean again, not after everything that happened after...Everything that went on and on for months afterwards. I just wanted to forget...I tried to forget. That was my mistake. You shouldn't try to forget. You should forgive yourself, but you shouldn't try to forget. There's no need to forget. Everything I've done on this job becomes a part of me, but I don't have to internalize it all. It's a part of me, but it doesn't have to affect my self. That's the only way I can keep doing my job."

"Yeah," Morgan agreed. "Once we do that, there's really nothing to be afraid of anymore. I mean, anything can happen. We can die tomorrow. We can screw up, and someone else can die tomorrow. We can commit pre-meditated murder, and everyone else can live happily ever after. And we'll just have to accept it and keep plugging away. There's nothing to be afraid of anymore."

"Nothing except being vaporized by a thermonuclear weapon in a subway tunnel," Reid retrieved another juice box from the jacket.

"Or having to jump up and down over the floor in the train for hours at a time," Morgan snorted. "Here, Reid, have another hot dog," he handed Reid a deliciously sizzling Fenway Frank. "You look like you're going to need this after all that jumping. How many pounds did you lose that day?"

"I don't know," Reid said, "I was afraid to check. See? Yet another thing to be afraid of."

"What about the dark?" Morgan asked, "Are you still afraid of the dark?"

"I'm working on it," Reid replied. "I'm going to revise my previous statement. It's not the inherent absence of light that I'm afraid of, it's the stuff lurking in the shadows when there's not enough light. My imagination switches into overdrive in the near-dark. Surprisingly, it accepts total darkness."

"You know, Reid, there's something to be said for an overactive imagination," Morgan considered. "There's something to be said for an overflowing factoid collection too. There's something to be said for both knowledge and imagination. As Albert Einstein once said..."

"The more shit you know, the more shit you can pull out of your ass to shove up the UnSub's ass?" Reid completed the thought through a mouthful of Fenway Frank.

Morgan gaped in shock.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, Reid!"

"What?" Reid glanced sideways, putting his baseball cap back on as he finished his hot dog.

Morgan recovered a smidgeon of composure. He patted his buddy on the back.

"It's nice to see you acting normal for once, Kid," Morgan congratulated Reid.

"Thanks," Reid snorted, rolling his eyes beneath his filthy hat.

He reached for the jacket draped over his seat. From the limitless interior, he pulled out an elongated piece of plastic. He blew forcefully into the trumpet-shaped instrument. It produced the most annoying sound that Morgan had ever heard.

"Bzzzzzzz...Bzzzzzzz...Bzzzzzzz..." Reid blew the vuvuzela.

Morgan tossed away his juice box, swallowed his mouthful of moonshine, and pried the horrible instrument out of Reid's resisting fingers. He blew it once himself before he launched it into the air behind him, across several rows of seats, over the back wall of the Green Monster, onto Lansdowne Street below. Whether the instrument hit any vehicles or drunks or baby carriages was none of Morgan's business. His only duty was to eliminate its annoying buzzing noise from the dignified old ballpark.

As soon as one crisis was resolved, Morgan found himself in the midst of a new crisis. This one was completely outside his control.

The Red Sox were down 0-3 in the World Series. The Red Sox were down 1-2 in the bottom of the ninth inning. They were down to their last out, with a runner on third and a batter at the plate.

In the blink of an eye, the nearly-impossible happened. The runner on third stole home. The opposing pitcher and catcher lost their minds. The catcher called a horrible pitch, and the pitcher threw a horrible pitch. The batter hit an inside-the-park home run, the ball ricocheting around the stands in right field while the opposing right fielder scurried frantically over the warning track and the fans hollered embarassingly vile obscenities at him.

Pandemonium erupted within Fenway Park. The Red Sox were down 1-3 in the World Series. Now was not the time for any form of the word "lose".

"Hey Morgan!" Reid exclaimed while jumping up and down over the Green Monster. "Look, look! It's a base brawl! I've always wanted to see a base brawl!"

Morgan looked while jumping up and down over the Green Monster. What he saw was a bunch of guys laughing and hugging each other like little kids spared from having to go to bed early. He couldn't begin to understand how Reid had interpreted the behavior as a base brawl. He turned to correct the idiot.

"No, Idiot!" Morgan yelled at Reid. "It's not a base brawl! The Sox won the game! They survived elimination! We're headed for Game 5! Here! Tomorrow!"

"They survived elimination?" Reid asked incredulously, savoring Morgan's frustrated frowning eyebrows over his rabid frowning eyes.

In a flash of mercy, Reid decided to stop pretending. He had tortured Morgan enough...for the current evening.

"They survived elimination!" Reid yelled, staring at Morgan with rabid eyes and clutching at Morgan's arm with rabid fingers. "The Sox won! They won! They won! They won!" he screamed like a little girl.

"Yes! Thank you for acting normal!" Morgan yelled back, reaching over to hug the reformed idiot.

In that moment, the wall of rubble that he had built around himself, over years and years and years, collapsed downwards and sideways as he reached a decision. From now on, Derek Morgan would hug whomever he wanted to hug whenever he wanted to hug them. There was that one other time when Morgan should have offered Reid a hug, but he hadn't, because he had always needed to maintain some distance between himself and other men. Now was the time to trash the need. If a guy couldn't hug his best buddy and jump up and down in a 98-year-old ballpark the moment their mutual favorite team clawed its way back from the brink of death, then the universe might as well die with a whimper.

And so it was, that on a clear fall night, at 11:59:59 PM on All Hallow's Eve, when all order was suspended, and the barriers between the natural and the supernatural were temporarily removed, SSA Derek Morgan, the one who had recovered the child, and SSA Dr. Spencer Reid, the one who had never let go of the child, found themselves, like five-year-old children, jumping up and down over the Green Monster, in defiance, not intending to stop until Mommy and Daddy gave them their World Series rings. And so it was, that on a clear fall night, sometime in November and thousands of miles away, the Red Sox stormed back from 0-3 down to win the World Series.

Morgan and Reid were not there to see it. They were busy, raiding the house of a serial killer in Silver Spring, Maryland. It was a dangerous raid, and Morgan was almost shot in the head by the UnSub, before Reid shot the UnSub in the head with his trusty revolver.

Afterwards, when the body had been carted away to the Coroner's Office, when the blood had been washed off the hands that had produced it, Hotch came by and told them the news with a sly smile on his lips. He walked away as fast as he had walked over, leaving the two buddies to celebrate next to a fence of yellow caution tape. As rabid as they were, the buddies did not celebrate their World Series rings. They celebrated their state of living, beneath a star-filled celestial sphere, and the same thought intruded upon both of their minds.

The thought was not about crises, not chemical or nuclear, not serial or sporadic, and certainly not baseball. It was about living and dying, believing and trusting, self and others.

It could only be whispered softly in a solitary moment, but it applied to others as much as it applied to self. Once thought, it would find its way into the cold night air, through whichever pair of lips uttered it wherever they happened to be.

The man - the one, the other, or both - strong in body and strong in mind - strode towards his waiting vehicle. He inhaled the cold night air and exhaled the warm whispered thought.

"Faith rewarded," he whispered.

* * *

Author's Note: Woohoo! Complete! Thanks to all readers and reviewers! It was really fun blowing stuff up and making stuff up. If you have any thoughts about the story, please leave them in the reviews or send me a pm. The World Series matchup in this chapter is to memorialize the first baseball game I ever attended. :)

My current policy is to write a serious story and a fluffy story at the same time, so here's a preview of what is to come:

1) "Food and Drug", starring Reid and Prentiss. Reid and Prentiss infiltrate the Food and Drug Administration for a case. They bond over menial tasks, deal with a personal-ethical knot, and kick ass in dorky ways. Part medical mystery, part Clue-style "Who dun it".

2) "Minimans", starring Reid, Jack, and Henry. Due to unforeseen circumstances, Hotch and JJ have to leave their offspring with Reid for a weekend. Reid develops a unique set of parenting skills. This is after I finish "Laryngitis".


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